Product Description

Leading scholars from the united States, Israel, Poland, and other European countries provide a comprehensive account of what took place at the Auschwitz death camp. The book addresses the history of the camp, the technology and dimensions of the genocide carried out there, profiles of the perpetrators and the lives of inmates, underground resistance and escapes, and what the outside world knew about Auschwitz and when. 25 photos.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72700 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

Amazon.com Review
Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, edited by Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum, is probably the most comprehensive volume on Auschwitz in print. Essays by leading scholars from Europe, Israel, and the United States document the history of the camp, the technology and magnitude of the genocide that occurred there, profiles of the inmates and the Nazis who ran the camp (such as Joseph Mengele), the underground resistance that arose, and what the outside world knew about Auschwitz and when. It's not a book to read straight through because of the sheer volume of information (more than 600 pages of text) and the horror of its contents. But it's the best resource for answering a wide variety of questions about the camp, especially those raised by the many excellent memoirs by the survivors. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Publishers Weekly
In original essays, some 20 scholars from the U.S., Israel and Europe contribute to a comprehensive portrait of the largest and most lethal of the Nazi death camps. If the book lacks the drive of a narrative history, it nonetheless serves as a vital contribution to Holocaust studies and a bulwark against forgetting. Several essays are notable. Franciszek Piper describes how Auschwitz exploited prisoners as laborers before exterminating them, and Robert-Jan Van Pelt discusses how Auschwitz was the focus of "a Faustian project to create a German paradise amid Polish perdition." Aleksander Lasik writes on camp commandant Rudolf Hoss, a dutiful functionary who neither evaded responsibility nor was troubled by conscience. Hermann Langbein, a former prisoner himself, recounts prisoner efforts at resistance, ranging from smuggling medicine supplied by the Polish underground to the only major rebellion in the camp's history, the blowing up of a crematorium, which "cannot be exactly recounted." David Wyman argues that the U.S. military evaded bombing the camp because they considered rescuing Jews to be an "extraneous problem" and an "unwanted burden." Newly authoritative information is included in several essays, including one by Jean-Claude Pressac, a French investigator and former Holocaust denier, on the construction of the gas chambers and crematoria, and another by Piper that assesses the number of victims as at least 1.1 million, 90% of them Jews. Gutman directs the Research Center at Yad Vashem in Israel; Berenbaum directs the Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this work, leading scholars from the United States, Israel, Poland, and other European countries contribute essays about Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi death camps, where more than a million people were murdered. Contributors include Yehuda Bauer, Raul Hilberg, Randolph Braham, Lawrence Langer, and Jean-Claude Pressac. Various aspects of Auschwitz are covered, including its history, the theory of genocide by the Nazis, physical details of the camp and of the killing, profiles of inmates and of the Nazis, resistance and escapes, and what the rest of the world knew about Auschwitz. This comprehensive study of Auschwitz provides a multidisciplinary analysis of the death camp from the viewpoints of historians, psychologists, sociologists, art historians, physicians, and chemists. Recommended for all libraries.
Mary Salony, West Virginia Northern Comm. Coll. Lib., Wheeling
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Auschwitz laid bare.
There have, of course, been many studies of Auschwitz. However, this is far and away the most comprehensive to appear. The many contributors cover the historical, sociological and psychological aspects in rigorous and scholarly style. This reviewer would pick out as particularly insightful Aleksander Lasik's analysis of the SS at the camp,whose numbers grew steadily as the war progressed,and Nathan Cohen for a gripping account of the diaries of the Sonderkommando which were found near the crematoria at Birkenau. Since the book is over 600 pages of closely argued text, it is in effect a work of reference. Fortunately, the index appears to be very good and following up subjects or characters is not difficult. There are, incidentally, two themes not really tracked here: holocaust revisionism debates nor Auschwitz as portrayed in the mass media. The editors, no doubt sensibly, have instead revealed what made Auschwitz tick and how perpetrators and victims related to their gruesome environment.

A REVISIONIST'S NIGTHMARE
This book contains several studies by different scholars, about the workings of the Auschwitz killing machine. Very well researched, it addresses different moral, legal, sociological and psychological issues about the people that worked (S.S. and Sonderkommando) and those who died in the camp. It also provides valuable insigths and enough documented information about Auschwitz's infrastructure, that clearly eliminates any possibility to deny the reality of this tragedy.
If you are a historian or a scholar of the Holocaust or the S.S, you should have this book in your library. If you are a Holocaust denier, you must read this book, with an open mind. Then, you will be able to perhaps move on, to deny Pol Pot's killing fields...

Expectations can ignore reality
Michael Ryan calls the book "cold". I have a large library of books on the Holocaust that look at through many eyes. Often the books by survivors are filled with emotion and facts as seen from a narrow view. A scientific study gives us the facts in as much detail as possible ON THE POINTS STUDIED. Read Hoess's autobiography for possibly the best understanding of the minds of many of the participants.

To Mr. Frantzman I would suggest that this book is 600 pages long, but certainly not ALL INCLUSIVE. I doubt that anyone could possibly write a single book (or a set within a rational time) that can deal "fairly" with every facit of the camp. My first book was the seminal "The Destruction of European Jewery" by Raul Hilberg who a few years ago I had a chance to meet and discuss issues. He said that it would take a library of books (which I have) to cover all the aspects of the Holocaust, and still we would only know ABOUT it. And he was right. I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN DETAIL--BUT DON'T TRULY UNDERSTAND HOW A NATION COULD DO SUCH A THING. Aways there are the "insane"--but a NATION? But what about Pol Pot, Africa, etc. Even many of those who survived (and I have known a number) cannot stretch their minds to understand. And some of my friends were in the first batch of American soldiers to enter a camp, and to their deaths they could still FEEL (and have nightmares about)it--but not understand how it could happen.