Large Print Reviews - The Holocaust

Large Print Reviews

The Holocaust
By Martin Gilbert
Read By David Case

The Holocaust
A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War
By Martin Gilbert
Read by David Case
Books on Tape, (1995)
An Unabridged Audio Recording in Two Parts
Book Numbers 3842 A & B - 24 Cassettes
ISBN: (A) 0-7366-3172-0, (B) 0-7366-3173-9
Genre: History - The Holocaust (Shoah), World War II

Other editions:
Standard Print (Paperback) | Standard Print (Hardcover)

Reviewed by Rochelle Caviness - January 7, 2002

When World War II started, there were about 8 million Jews in Europe. During the war, at least 6 million Jews were systematically murdered. Had the Nazi's had more time to carry out their genocidal 'final solution', every Jew on Earth would have been annihilated. In this classic work of Holocaust literature, Sir Martin Gilbert chronicles the near destruction of European Jewry at the hands of the Nazi death machine, and the minions that supported it. Following a chronologically driven methodology, Gilbert offers the reader a brief overview of anti-Semitism before 1933. Building upon this foundation, he embarks upon the gruesome task of detailing what happened to the Jews during World War II. Throughout, he tries to show how these horrific events occurred, and most important, why they happened.

The Holocaust is a sobering book that was written with consummate skill. Deftly, Gilbert interweaves the mind numbing statistics with eyewitness accounts of the atrocities. These accounts serve to bring the statistics, all too horribly, to life. With chilling intensity, these personal accounts describe how the individuals felt when the Nazi's came to power, and the tragic impacted that the Nazi regime had on their lives. These accounts also detail what it meant to be driven from your home, how it felt to witness the murder of loved ones and to forced to work as a slave laborer. They also recount the untold miracles that occurred, which allowed the handful of survivors, to survive. Throughout, Gilbert gives special emphasis to the estimated 1.5 million Jewish children who died during the Holocaust, and the methods by which they were murdered.

These accounts cover life in prewar Germany and the effect of the Nuremberg Laws. They also graphically depict deportations and life in the ghettos, slave labor camps, and the concentration camps that dotted the Nazi empire. These narratives also detail how mass-murder was carried out, with a factory like efficiency, in the concentration camps. Even more horrifically; they also detail less efficient means of murder, such torture and shooting. Please keep in mind that the term 'less efficient' is subjective. For example, on September 29-30, 1941, over 33,000 Jews were shot to death alongside a ravine called Babi Yar, which is located near Kiev, in the Ukraine.

These accounts are extremely graphic in nature and are very disturbing. However, is only by learning about them that you can begin, at least in part, to understand the senseless, abhorrent acts that occurred. These narratives will also help you to understand the tremendous courage and spirit of the survivors, and the horrid impact that these events had upon their lives.

This unabridged, audio edition of The Holocaust is read by David Case, a professional, and highly skilled, book narrator. His reading is intense and poignant, and his reading of the personal narratives is particularly moving. This is a melancholy book, which is to be expected considering its topic. Nonetheless, Case was able to maintain a steady and active tempo throughout the reading of this lengthy book. However, the emotional toll that this reading had on him is noticeable in his voice, especially when he is describing some of the heinous events contained in this monumental work.

In addition to chronicling the efforts and methods used to kill the Jews, Gilbert also addresses more controversial issues. Such as, why did millions of Germans and other Europeans actively assisted and participated in the murder of their Jewish neighbors? He also takes a hard, although somewhat superficial look, at the unsympathetic response of the Allies to the plight of the Jews. Gilbert also recounts the efforts of the countless heros who helped to save Jews. Sometimes these heros were nameless individual. Sometimes they were entire countries. For example, Bulgaria, although a German ally, made a political and ethical decision to resist German pressures to deport the country's Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Consequently, the entire Jewish population of Bulgaria was saved!

Gilbert also devotes substantial space to the role of the Jewish resistance movements, including large scale movements, such as the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, as well as smaller, personal acts of resistance. As Gilbert points out, for many, survival was the greatest form of resistance that they could realize. And it was resistance, via survival, that gave many the willpower and the stamina to actually survive. And it is from these survivors that Gilbert garnered much of the material that he used in this book. But most important, the stories and eyewitness accounts of the survivors serve to give voice to the millions dead, who are unable to speak for themselves.

Gilbert also candidly recounts the fact that liberation did not always equal life. In the hours, weeks, and months after the war 'officially' ended, thousands of Jews died as a result of the treatment they received at the hands of the Nazi's. Countless more where permanently injured, both physically and mentally, from the ordeals that they endured. Others, upon learning that they were the only member of their family to have survived, found that they could not go on alone and took their own lives.

Gilbert also points out the tragic truth that many of the survivors where abused by their liberators. For example, many Jewish women were raped by the very same Russian soldiers who liberated them. As well, after the war ended, the killing did not. Untold numbers of Jews, who somehow managed to survive the Nazi onslaught, were brutally murdered as they attempted to return to their homes. Sometimes they were killed by opportunistic thugs, other times by old neighbors unwilling to return property that they had stolen after the Jews had been marched off by the Germans.

Martin Gilbert has written over 30 books, most of which deal issues and people connected with World War II. The Holocaust must have been the hardest book he has ever written, for it is definitely a hard book to read or listen to. This book may give you nightmares, and it will surely haunt your thoughts. So you may ask, why read it? The answer is simple - to remember. While the events detailed in this book may seem like ancient history to many, the scars that these events left are still raw. And worse, the threat of anti-Semitism is as real today as it was in June of 1941, when the Holocaust officially began. In 1905 when George Santayana wrote "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it!" He could never have imagined that this line would become the epitaph of an event of mass murder, on an unprecedented scope, that was to become know as the Holocaust.

For more information on the Holocaust, check out these links:

The Yad Vashem
The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority

The Nizkor Project
A major online, Holocaust, education resource.

Remember.org
Eye witness accounts and books by survivors, this site also includes the text of the book The Five Million Forgotten a book about non-Jewish victims of Nazi violence.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Holocaust Timeline

Statistics of The Holocaust
Lists prewar Jewish population, by country, estimated number killed, and number of survivors from each country.

Holocaust and Jewish Studies Sites
This site provides an extensive list of links to Holocaust and Jewish Studies websites.

Related Reviews:

All But My Life, by Gerda Weissmann Klein.
This is Gerda Weissmann's memoir of the six years she spent under Nazi tyranny, during which she spent three years in Nazi forced labor camp. This story also recounts her liberation and her meeting with Kurt Klein, the young man who was to become her husband. All But My Life is a horrific and heart wrenching story, yet it is also surprising uplifting. It is a classic of Holocaust literature. (Audio)
IBM and the Holocaust, by Edwin Black
A compelling look at IBM's collaboration with Nazi Germany, and the impact which it had upon the course of the war, and more importantly, on the Holocaust. (Large Print)

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