Product Description

The devastation of Hungarian Jewry was among the worst atrocities of World War II, encompassing the murder of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in the final months of the war.

Facing defeat, Hitler and his allies brought the Holocaust to Hungary with unprecedented speed and barbarity. The Hungarian Jewish population was rounded up and deported to concentration camps in just 54 days. 437,402 Jews. 148 trains. Destination: Auschwitz.

The German plan for annihilation of the Jews-called the 'Final Solution'-set the goal that not a single survivor would be left to bear witness to the events. Fifty years later, Steven Spielberg established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to record the testimony of as many survivors as possible. From the ashes of the Holocaust these voices now emerge to share their stories and to represent the nearly six million Jews who did not survive.

Survivors and liberators share what they experienced in gripping, firsthand testimony. Archival photographs document history, and powerful color images chronicle the survivors' emotional return to the places of their pasts:from homes unseen for fifty years to the ghettos and concentration camps of their imprisonment. Top scholars have been brought together to share their insights into one of humanity's darkest chapters. These elements are poignantly synthesized in The Last Days as a warning for all mankind.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1067303 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From School Library Journal
YA-Based on the narratives of Holocaust survivors interviewed in Spielberg's film by the same name, this volume chronicles the Nazi's efforts to exterminate Hungarian Jews in the last few months of World War II. Readers witness this effort through the powerful accounts of six concentration-camp survivors and three American liberators. Each story concludes with the narrator's return 50 years later to the camp and, in some cases to the hometown that held his/her memories. The book is illustrated with archival photographs and contemporary color photos that document the individuals' return to the sites where these horrors took place. An introduction by Holocaust historian David Cesarani provides an excellent historical framework. An impressive combination of recognized scholarship and haunting oral history.
Becky Ferrall, Stonewall Jackson High School, Manassas, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"The Holocaust must be taught as the possible culmination of the horror that can occur when man loses moral integrity and belief in the sanctity of the human life. The Last Days is a potent and convincing contribution to this learning process." --Randolph L. Braham
-- Review

Review

Customer Reviews

Witnessing the murder of Hungarian Jewry
Six eye-witness accounts of the destruction of Hungarian Jewry by the Nazis are at the heart of this work. This and the witnesses return fifty years later to the place of the destruction and their reflection upon this.
Their testimony is part of the sacred act of remembrance of the destruction, and of those destroyed. It is of course a very partial act and can never compensate for the destruction.
With the murder of over four- hundred and fifty thousand Jews were murdered thousands of families, whole worlds.
The mind and heart cannot encompass or understand this.

gripping
This is the story of the final days of the Holocaust when the Final Solution was inflicted upon the Jews of Hungary with devestating fury by the nazis and their local collaborators The Arrow Cross.

This is not a happy book but an insightful one that covers this portion of the bloody social engineering of Hitler's Final Solution, his attrocity against Jews.

exellent historical document a must for all
exellent visual and historical document please advise publishers of the following p201 liberation photo, it is J Krammer with british gaurds at belsen not Fritz Klein revisionist would love that let us never forget.