The Holocaust: History and Memory

314 Pages·2016·2.04 MB·English

by  Jeremy Black

THE
H O L O C A U S T
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THE
H O L O C A U S T
HISTORY AND MEMORY
JEREMY BLACK
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of Manufactured in the
United States of America
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing Library of Congress
Herman B. Wells Library 350 Cataloging-in-Publication Data
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 usa Names: Black, Jeremy, 1955- author.
Title: The Holocaust : history and
iupress.indiana.edu memory / Jeremy M. Black.
Description: Bloomington and
© 2016 by Jeremy Black Indianapolis : Indiana University
Press, [2016] | ?2016 | Includes
All rights reserved bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2016006405 (print) |
No part of this book may be reproduced lccn 2016006610 (ebook) | isbn
or utilized in any form or by any means, 9780253022042 (cloth : alk. paper) |
electronic or mechanical, including isbn 9780253022141 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
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any information storage and retrieval Subjects: lcsh: Holocaust, Jewish
system, without permission in writing (1939-1945)
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of American University Presses’ (print) | lcc D804.3 (ebook) |
Resolution on Permissions constitutes ddc 940.53/18–dc23
the only exception to this prohibition. lc record available at http://lccn.loc
.gov/2016006405
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Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ansi z39.48–1992. 1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
For a Branch of My Family I Never Met
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Contents
· Preface ix
1 Until Barbarossa 1
2 Toward Genocide 37
3 Genocide 81
4 Germany’s Allies 131
5 Memorialization 153
6 The Holocaust and Today 219
7 Conclusions 236
· notes 247
· Index 271
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Preface
The history of the Holocaust, or Shoah, needs revisiting
in the face of continuing attempts to deny its veracity or scope. The arrest
of David Irving in Austria in 2005, on the charge of Holocaust denial,
served as a pointed reminder of its contentious character and, that year
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new president of Iran, publicly joined the
sordid ranks of the deniers. In fact, Adolf Hitler’s determination to rid
Europe of Jews and what he saw as Jewish ideas in all their manifesta-
tions, was central to his ultimate goal of establishing a thousand-year
Reich (German empire). The opportunity was provided by the extensive
German conquests in the early stages of World War II, and the history
of the Holocaust in part properly belongs to that of the war. Although
this might seem an obvious point, it is challenged by the range of work
on aspects of the war that underplays or ignores the Holocaust and
other Jewish themes.1 Indeed, I deliberately included a volume on the
Holocaust in the seven-volume collection of articles and essays on the
war by various scholars that I edited in 2007. The present book, which
builds on an earlier book published in 2008, is written in part in response
to the continuation of Holocaust denial and also because of the need for
a short introductory study.
The spate of Holocaust denial during the 1990s and the 2000s was
the clarion call for the writing and publication of my 2008 book. The
context for it was: the mounting evasiveness, downplaying, and even
denial of the Holocaust in certain European and non-European circles;
the challenges these vexatious developments posed to Western civiliza-
tion; and apprehension over what these foibles could portend for civil
ix