Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Penguin Books (2006), Edition: New Ed, 176 pages
Description
At the terrible heart of the modern age lies Auschwitz. In a total inversion of earlier hopes about the use of science and technology to improve, extend, and protect human life, Auschwitz manipulated the same systems to quite different ends. In Sybille Steinbacher's terse, powerful new book, the reader is led through the process by which something unthinkable to anyone on earth in the 1930s had become a sprawling, industrial reality during the course of the Second World War. How Auschwitz grew and mutated into an entire dreadful city, how both those who managed it and those who were killed by it came to be in Poland in the 1940s, and how it was allowed to happen, is something everyone needs to understand.--From publisher description.
Media reviews
Choice
Readers will learn how and why Auschwitz developed into the largest Nazi killing center, become introduced to some of the more well-known events of the camp, and explore the Nazi bureaucratic structure and complex, often-Byzantine camp organization, but they will not hear the many voices of camp
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inmates, camp guards, or auxiliary personnel. Show Less
Book Cover
For anyone wanting a brief and reliable explanation of how Auschwitz evolved into the epicenter of Nazi mass-killing.
Booklist
The author traces the history of the town of Auschwitz (known as Oswiecim under Polish rule) and of the camp and its subcamps. Steinbacher discusses the Nazis' extermination policy, their first experiments in mass killings, the construction of Birkenau, the murder of non-Jews, the town and camp
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after liberation, and the trials of several hundred SS members after the end of World War II. A final chapter deals with the extreme right-wing apologists who have denied the mass murder of the Jews. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member tommi180744
A concise and thus the contents all the more appalling for its brevity of factual account of the whole process by which the seemingly cultivated, civilized Germany of the 1930s-40s descended into a depraved, genocidal nightmare perpetrated on Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies etc. made possible by the
The author's book concludes with a very brief chapter highlighting the ghastly attempts of recent decades to retell in a better light and/or deny (the "LIE") that Auschwitz was an extermination camp.
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most mundane (yet egregiously vile) series of steps that created, organized and ran the purpose-built centre of Nazi slaughterhouse mentality that was AUSCHWITZ. A Concentration Camp for death by Gas Chamber, Forced Labour, Execution etc. for the inmates made up of Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies & POWs.The author's book concludes with a very brief chapter highlighting the ghastly attempts of recent decades to retell in a better light and/or deny (the "LIE") that Auschwitz was an extermination camp.
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LibraryThing member CraigGoodwin
Brief overview of the history, inevitable that more information is required.
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
176 p.; 4.37 inches
ISBN
014102142X / 9780141021423