The first to write the history of the Holocaust were the victims themselves.
All across Europe, Jewish writers documented the annihilation in letters, diaries, and testimonies while it was unfolding. The duty to record these experiences “is like a fire caught in my bones, burning inside me, screaming: describe!” wrote Chaim Kaplan in his Warsaw ghetto diary before he was murdered in Treblinka in 1942.
Still, it took a long time before the victims’ texts were taken seriously. What happens when we place the victims’ own experiences at the center of the history of the Holocaust? Helland’s book is a comprehensive presentation of this international genocide – from the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany up to the survivors’ experiences in the first postwar years.
He takes us through the entire long and fateful process that led from the totalitarian breakthrough in Germany to race laws, deportations, ghettos, mass graves, and finally the death camps in Europe.
This is a carefully composed volume of 374 pages, with notes, index, references – in 70 additional pages.
A Masterpiece of Memory Politics.
Dag og Tid
Holocaust: A History Told by the Victims is, from its title to its final full stop, an exceptionally well-conceived book. That it is the first complete historical account of the Holocaust written in Norwegian is an achievement in itself—but not the most important one. Rather, it is the method, the approach to history, that elevates this work far above competent nonfiction craftsmanship.
Klassekampen
Frode Helland has framed the testimonies with insightful analyses and comments in a concrete and reader-friendly language… I haven’t read all the books that have come out this year, but it’s hard to imagine any that are more important than this one.
Stavanger Aftenblad
“I have no doubt: This will be one of the most important books of the autumn – and a reference work for anyone who wants to try to understand the Nazis’ attempt to annihilate the European Jews.”
Dagbladet
The book is well written and has a strong momentum. It is the victims’ accounts that truly elevate it.
Dagens Næringsliv
Helland is a highly capable communicator, and Holocaust is written with a steady, almost elegant hand—an approach that suits the gravity of the subject.
Morgenbladet
