The Nazi Holocaust

Brief but surprisingly comprehensive, The Nazi Holocaust places the tragedy in historical context, summarizes its major events, and considers the moral, ethical, and psychological issues that have followed in its wake. By showing how the event is universal rather than uniquely Jewish, and by making connections between the Holocaust and larger human history, Ronnie S. Landau succeeds in making the Holocaust understandable for the common reader. "The central problems in communicating the Holocaust experience," Landau writes, "involve questions of context, perspective, balance, and emphasis. Very often one or more of the necessary frameworks within which an understanding of the Holocaust may be approached - Jewish history, modern German history, genocide in the modern world, or the fundamental mechanisms of human psychology - is neglected or glossed over." By placing the Holocaust within these contexts, Landau makes connections that help to universalize the experience. Designed for the general reader as well as for students and educators, The Nazi Holocaust has won the endorsement of a variety of religious and ethnic organizations and leaders in Holocaust studies. It is likely to become a standard introduction to the Holocaust.