“in many ways, an amazing book; dispassionately written by someone who would have every justifiable reason not to be dispassionate; non-judgmental but with such a wealth of horrific facts that you come away saddened, disgusted, educated, but, in the end, resolved to work against racism.
the footnotes are a treasure trove of additional reading: far from simply listing sources, they are narratively written many times and will serve any student of the holocaust.
my only criticism - and I hesitate to term it as such since the book doesn't purport to cover anything other than the Holocaust and I recognize that the Holocaust is different in kind than the Nazis repressive treatment of other ethnic groups - is the lack of attention to the inhuman treatment by the Nazis of non-jews. I would not have expected any comprehensive treatment of the topic. Like I said, this is a book about the Holocaust. But I fear that someone could walk away from this book thinking that, for example, non-jewish Poles, Russians, Czechs, Serbs, Italians, French, did not suffer at the hands of the Nazis.”
Alex D wrote this review Wednesday, September 9 2009.
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