Table of Contents

Contents Preface Contributors Acknowledgements Part 1 A History of the Camp 1.Auschwitz - An Overview / Yisrael Gutman 2.The System of Prisoner Exploitation / Franciszek Piper 3.The Satellite Camps / Shmuel Krakowski 4.The Number of Victims / Franciszek Piper Part II Dimensions of Genocide 5.Auschwitz and the "Final Solution" / Raul Hilberg 6.A Site in Search of a Mission / Robert-Jan Van Pelt 7.Gas Chambers and Crematoria / Franciszek Piper 8.The Machinery of Mass Murder at Auschwitz / Jean-Claude Pressac with Robert-Jan Van Pelt 9.The Plunder of the Victims and Their Corpses / Andrzej Strzelecki Part II The Perpetrators 10.Historical-Sociological Profile of the Auschwitz SS / Aleksander Lasik 11.Rudolf Hoss: Manager of Crime / Aleksander Lasik 12.Nazi Doctors / Robert Jay Lifton and Amy Hackett 13.The Crimes of Josef Mengele / Helena Kubica Part IV The Inmates 14.The Auschwitz Prisoner Administration / Danuta Czech 15.Hospitals / Irena Strzelecka 16.Women / Irena Strzelecka 17.Children / Helena Kubica 18.The Family Camp / Nili Keren 19.Gypsies / Yehuda Bauer 20.Hungarian Jews / Randolph L. Braham 21.Auschwitz - A Psychological Perspective / Leo Eitinger Part V The Resistance 22.The Auschwitz Underground / Hermann Langbein 23.Prisoner Escapes / Henryk Swiebocki 24.Diaries of the Sonderkommando / Nathan Cohen Part VI Auschwitz and the Outside World 25.What Was Known and When / Martin Gilbert 26.The Vrba and Wetzler Report / Miroslav Karny 27.Why Auschwitz Wasn't Bombed / David S. Wyman 28.Postwar Prosecution of the Auschwitz SS / Alexander Lasik 29.The Literature of Auschwitz / Lawrence Langer Index

Promotional Information

A Selection of the Jewish Book Club

About the Author

Yisrael Gutman is Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at Hebrew University and former Director of the Research Center, Yad Vashem.
Michael Berenbaum is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and former Director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute.

Reviews

"This learned volume is about as chilling as historiography gets." - Walter Laqueur, The New Republic " ... a one-volume study of Auschwitz without peer in Holocaust literature." - Kirkus Reviews " ... a comprehensive portrait of the largest and most lethal of the Nazi death camps ... serves as a vital contribution to Holocaust studies and a bulwark against forgetting."- Publishers Weekly

In original essays, some 20 scholars from the U.S., Israel and Europe contribute to a comprehensive portrait of the largest and most lethal of the Nazi death camps. If the book lacks the drive of a narrative history, it nonetheless serves as a vital contribution to Holocaust studies and a bulwark against forgetting. Several essays are notable. Franciszek Piper describes how Auschwitz exploited prisoners as laborers before exterminating them, and Robert-Jan Van Pelt discusses how Auschwitz was the focus of ``a Faustian project to create a German paradise amid Polish perdition.'' Aleksander Lasik writes on camp commandant Rudolf Hoss, a dutiful functionary who neither evaded responsibility nor was troubled by conscience. Hermann Langbein, a former prisoner himself, recounts prisoner efforts at resistance, ranging from smuggling medicine supplied by the Polish underground to the only major rebellion in the camp's history, the blowing up of a crematorium, which ``cannot be exactly recounted.'' David Wyman argues that the U.S. military evaded bombing the camp because they considered rescuing Jews to be an ``extraneous problem'' and an ``unwanted burden.'' Newly authoritative information is included in several essays, including one by Jean-Claude Pressac, a French investigator and former Holocaust denier, on the construction of the gas chambers and crematoria, and another by Piper that assesses the number of victims as at least 1.1 million, 90% of them Jews. Gutman directs the Research Center at Yad Vashem in Israel; Berenbaum directs the Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Illustrations not seen by PW. (June)

"This learned volume is about as chilling as historiography gets." - Walter Laqueur, The New Republic " ... a one-volume study of Auschwitz without peer in Holocaust literature." - Kirkus Reviews " ... a comprehensive portrait of the largest and most lethal of the Nazi death camps ... serves as a vital contribution to Holocaust studies and a bulwark against forgetting."- Publishers Weekly