The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide Book

The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide by Wolfgang Benz is a dark flash of a book--156 astringent pages, describing the events and individuals who determined the fate of millions of Jews. The author is a German, not a Jew, and his task is analytical, not explanatory. The Holocaust avoids the questions that drive most books about its subject. It does not delve into the origins of National Socialism or the question of why Germans allowed the Holocaust to happen. Instead, Benz begins by describing the Wannsee Conference, which planned "to rid all German territory of Jews by legal means," and then describes the laws that allowed discrimination against Jews, the destruction of civil rights for Jews, and the creation of ghettos and concentration camps. His nonideological analysis of the genocide is far from amoral, however. Every page of this German's account of the holocaust rings with the mournfulness of a man who must take stock of the hardest parts of his history, in preparation for understanding that history. And although some scholars may argue there is no such thing as objectivity, Benz's account of the political genesis of genocide comes awfully close. "Not a single line of this book can be contested or argued out of existence," says Jewish historian Arthur Hertzberg in his introduction to The Holocaust. "All of these events took place, and they happened in the order in which he puts them." Simply having these facts so clearly and succinctly described will help many readers prepare to grapple with the raging moral questions raised by the Holocaust. That is cause for hope. --Michael Joseph Gross