The Last Days: Steven Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation - Hardcover

Spielberg, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312204620 ISBN 13: 9780312204624

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 1999

Synopsis

The devastation of Hungarian Jewry was among the worst atrocities of World War II, encompassing the murder of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in the final months of the war.

Facing defeat, Hitler and his allies brought the Holocaust to Hungary with unprecedented speed and barbarity. The Hungarian Jewish population was rounded up and deported to concentration camps in just 54 days. 437,402 Jews. 148 trains. Destination: Auschwitz.

The German plan for annihilation of the Jews-called the 'Final Solution'-set the goal that not a single survivor would be left to bear witness to the events. Fifty years later, Steven Spielberg established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to record the testimony of as many survivors as possible. From the ashes of the Holocaust these voices now emerge to share their stories and to represent the nearly six million Jews who did not survive.

Survivors and liberators share what they experienced in gripping, firsthand testimony. Archival photographs document history, and powerful color images chronicle the survivors' emotional return to the places of their pasts:from homes unseen for fifty years to the ghettos and concentration camps of their imprisonment. Top scholars have been brought together to share their insights into one of humanity's darkest chapters. These elements are poignantly synthesized in The Last Days as a warning for all mankind.

About this title

About the Author

David Cesarani is Professor of Twentieth-century Jewish History and Culture, University of Southhampton, and Director of the Wiener Library, London. He has just published a biography of Arthur Koestler.

Dr. Randolph Braham is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Sciences at the City College and the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of new York. He is the author of many scholarly monographs, including the highly acclaimed The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary.

Reviews

YA-Based on the narratives of Holocaust survivors interviewed in Spielberg's film by the same name, this volume chronicles the Nazi's efforts to exterminate Hungarian Jews in the last few months of World War II. Readers witness this effort through the powerful accounts of six concentration-camp survivors and three American liberators. Each story concludes with the narrator's return 50 years later to the camp and, in some cases to the hometown that held his/her memories. The book is illustrated with archival photographs and contemporary color photos that document the individuals' return to the sites where these horrors took place. An introduction by Holocaust historian David Cesarani provides an excellent historical framework. An impressive combination of recognized scholarship and haunting oral history.
Becky Ferrall, Stonewall Jackson High School, Manassas, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312204620
• ISBN 13: 9780312204624
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240