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? Frode 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. At the same time, the victims’ texts form the core of the account: diaries, eyewitness reports, and autobiographical works from a number of countries.
Holocaust. A History Told by the Victims 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. But above all, the book brings us close to the events, showing how they were experienced by living individuals – each with their own unique and personal perspective on the catastrophe.
This is a carefully composed volume of 374 pages, supplemented by notes, an index, and image references – extending over 70 additional pages.
“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
