Witnesses to the Holocaust : an Oral History / Edited by Rhoda G. Lewin

Personal accounts describe Europe during Hitler's rise to power, discussing Nazi persecution and the death camps

Lewin includes testaments from not only Nazi Holocaust survivors, but also from Jews who were not interred, and from the liberators. Interviews with survivors tell what happened to them after their country was occupied by the Germans, their deportation and interment, their eventual liberations, and what they thought about their experiences. Accounts by the liberators are sometimes more vivid because they describe what they saw in terms of feelings and emotions, whereas the victims seem almost forced into a clinical detachment. All of the interviews provide short, poignant statements about incredible inhumanity. The book includes pictures of survivors, then and now, and a teacher's guide to activities. With the recent upsurge in anti-Semitism, this book makes even more urgent the appeal by the Holocaust survivors not to forget. A compelling collection. --Stuart A. MacCaffray, Jr., Lake Braddock Secondary Sch . , Fairfax Co . , VA
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This collection of 60 accounts of Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators now living in Minnesota is edited to keep each story to the point, eliminate hearsay, translate foreign expressions, but guard the flavor of the individual interview. Thus the reader can vividly see, hear, feel, and smell what it was like to helplessly watch your bunkmate die in Auschwitz; to be nine years old and beg, smuggle, and steal to keep yourself and your little sister alive; to march into Dachau as an American soldier. No new historical facts come to light, yet this is a valuable addition to the Holocaust literature at high school level and above. It can also aid Holocaust centers in their efforts to record oral history in their own states.
-Gerda Haas, Holocaust Human Rights Ctr. of Maine, Augusta
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.