The Holocaust Encyclopedia

Book Description:

Although most libraries now contain many shelves of books describing various aspects of the Holocaust, comprehensive one-volume histories or reference books on the subject are rare. Thus, The Holocaust Encyclopedia, edited by Walter Lacquer (a modern European historian who has taught at Harvard, Brandeis, and Tel Aviv University, among others), fills an important gap in existing Holocaust literature. His book gathers accessible articles by many of the world’s leading Holocaust scholars on the full range of people and places involved, from Adolph Hitler and Gypsies to Russia and the Soviet Union. The articles are complemented by a comprehensive chronology and an excellent bibliographical essay, and by almost 300 illustrations, including maps and photographs. The photographs, by Adam Kaczkowski, are particularly well chosen and designed. Photography’s importance in the act of Holocaust remembrance is poignantly understated by Roger Greenspun in his entry on "Cinema and Television," in which he writes, "This was the first great human catastrophe to have so many pictures taken of it." The Holocaust Encyclopedia will become the first stop in the library for high school students wishing to learn about the Holocaust. It will also provide college students and adults with a reliable, authoritative, big-picture perspective on aspects of a genocide that, no matter how fully it is known, will never fully be understood. -- Michael Joseph Gross

The Holocaust has been the subject of countless books, works of art, and memorials. Fifty-five years after the fact the world still ponders the enormity of this disaster. The Holocaust Encyclopedia is the only comprehensive single-volume work of reference providing both a reflective overview of the subject and abundant detail concerning major events, policy decisions, cities, and individuals. Up-to-date and designed for easy access, the encyclopedia presents information on the major aspects of the Holocaust in essays by scholars from eleven countries who draw on a number of sources?including recently uncovered evidence from the former Soviet bloc?to provide in-depth studies on the political, social, religious, and moral issues of the Holocaust as well as short entries identifying events, sites, and individuals. The book also has more than 250 photographs, many of them rare, and 19 maps.

The volume includes: ? Raul Hilberg on concentration camps and Gypsies ? Ruth Bondy, Israel Gutman, and Dina Porat on major ghettoes ? Roger Greenspun on the Holocaust in cinema and television ? Richard Breitman on American policy ? Michael Berenbaum on theological and philosophical responses ? Saul Friedländer on Nazi policy ? Michael Hagemeister on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion ? Michael R. Marrus on historiography ? Christopher R. Browning on the Madagascar Plan ? Robert S. Wistrich on Holocaust denial ? James E. Young on Holocaust literature