Auschwitz: A New History

This book is a fascinating, enlightening, and moving history of one of the most infamous of the Nazi concentration camps. Rees doesn't just explain the history of the camp itself, he frequently ties it into the "big picture," the things happening elsewhere in the world and how they affected the camp, and sometimes vice versa. This big picture focus really makes the book, showing how everything in interrelated and how even the distant Allied nations affected Auschwitz's development throughout the war. The book is not only an indictment of the Nazis and those others responsible for such atrocities as Auschwitz and its sister camps, but even of the powers that "liberated" the inmates there at the end of the war. This was the part that really shocked me. The stereotypical image of the prisoners returning to hearth and home to resume their lives is shattered. Those lucky enough to be freed from Auschwitz had nowhere to go in the new eastern European totalitarian state created by the Soviets--their homes had been possessed and taken over by new owners "renting" from the state, and, as it turned out, the Soviets were no more friendly to the Jews than the Nazis. Women faced rape--some were even raped to death. Of course, there were also happy endings, and Rees gives them time as well. But the book is still a harrowing exploration of how deep human beings can sink--Nazis, Soviets, and even some of the prisoners were conscienceless by the end. Laurence Rees's new history of Auschwitz is a very good, readable book that should be required reading for anyone interested in Holocaust or World War II history. Highly recommended.

When one thinks of the labor and death camps instituted by the Nazis during World War II, the notorious concentration camp at Auschwitz comes immediately to mind. One cannot help but wonder what kind of mindset would devise such an infamy. How could Germany, a nation that was noted for its richness of culture, have devised a plan of genocide that was so far reaching and so inherently evil? The author attempts to answer that question and succeeds in doing so brilliantly. This is a very well-written book that will appeal to those who are interested in the general human condition, as well as those interested in the holocaust itself. It is scholarly, yet, at the same time, immensely readable. This is because the author has put a very human face on the dreaded death camp of Auschwitz. The stories and experiences of more than a hundred people are integrated throughout the narrative, which delves into the historical backdrop of the Nazi political machinery and its leadership. Survivors of Auschwitz, as well as Nazi perpetrators, tell of their experiences in the hell that was known as Auschwitz, and they tell it from their own unique perspectives. The symbiosis that often existed between prisoner and prison guard is quite unsettling, as are the attendant moral and ethical issues. The author attempts to help the reader understand how it was that the "final solution" came about. It is an unsentimental, intellectually objective, critical analysis of one of the most infamous episodes in modern history and warfare. The author carefully delineates how the Nazis developed their reprehensible strategy for global genocide, and how it came about being implemented. The creation of Auschwitz was crucial to the Nazis' desire to rid itself of Europe's Jewish population but, however, that desire may not have been entirely ideologically driven. From his extensive research, the author postulates that there may have been a practical, more pragmatic component that dictated the actions of the Nazis in the final, waning days of World War II that was no less immoral than the ideological one. This is simply a stunning and authoritative book by an author whose expertise in this area is undeniable. It is a comprehensive and insightful look at one of the most notorious death camps in the history of Nazi Germany. The author carefully explains the rise and fall of Auschwitz within the context of the Nazi mentality and ideology, as well as within the broader context of historical and military pragmatism. It is a devastating portrait, indeed, and with its sixteen pages of vintage black and white photographs, it is a book that will keep the reader riveted to its pages until the very last one is turned. Bravo!

This book is not for the squeemish of today's world. Aushchwitz: A New History, is just that, New. It reveals new insights regarding the phychological reasoning as to how Auschwitz and the other death camps evolved and why. The survivor's memories conveyed in this book allows the reader understand the complete brutality of what humans can do to one another when placed in humiliating and deadly conditions. As a humanist, the brutal descriptions in the book made me ill. The fact is that only 60 years ago the Nazis set back the human condition about 2500 years. Time and time again we hear "We must never forget" about what happened during the holocaust. This book answers the reasons as to why we must never forget.

Innumerable books have talked about Auschwitz, but this is the first time that I've seen a whole book about it. The detail in this book is incredible. A surprising part of the book is the current attitude of the guards that were interviewed. They do not give the standard only following orders but still believe that the monstrous acts they performed were proper. The book covers every aspect from the basic decisions to establish Auschwitz, to the transportation system, to the social impacts. This book has a wealth of information and is extremely well written.

Laurence Rees is a fine scholar and a fine writer and has the courage to present an historical summary of the one of the most horror-laden atrocities of the twentieth century - the Nazi camp called Auschwitz. Even the name conjures up loathing and nausea and near disbelief that such unimaginable mass killings, human medical experimentation, torture, and genocide could have possibly been real. But without denying any of the truths well documented since the Nuremberg Trials, Rees explores the initial beginnings of the concepts for the camp and the events that lead the Third Reich to push this Polish town site into world memory. World War I laid the seeds for the rise of German resentment for the loss of a war they felt was turned against them. At the core, in search for a causative factor, the Jews were perceived as the evil reason for Germany's losses. Not that anti-Semitism was limited to Germany: Rees wisely shows that those feelings were fairly widespread throughout the world. Yet it took the early fanatics that included Adolph Hitler to strive to purify Germany, rid the fatherland of the useless consumers of food that robbed the Germans of their rightful needs, and repatriate lost Germans to the fatherland at any cost. Rees postulates (with excellent quotations from both Nazi perpetrators and concentration camp survivors throughout this book) that the primary goal of creating concentration camps such as Auschwitz was to provide way stations for gathering non-Germans for deportation to make room for the return of 'lebensraum' for those of pure German blood. The progress from these initial postulates to the eventual conversion of the concentration camps as places for extermination of not only Jews but also any 'outsiders' ending with the gassing and cremation of millions of human beings is the trail Rees outlines for the reader. He also uses his hundreds of interviews with camp survivors to explore the inner workings of the camps, from the hierarchy of the Capos, the survival techniques, the trading issues with the Poles outside the camps, the brothels within the camps that serviced not only the Guards but also the inmates, and the day to day mechanisms of progressive annihilation of the inmates. This book is not easy reading: the approach is scholarly yet fascinating and the subject matter can induce waves of nausea in even the most iron-willed reader. But the book is terribly important. If our response to the Nazi genocide camps is only one-sided horror without the information as to how such camps evolved from first idea to ultimate tragedy, then we stand to see history repeat itself. We need only to look at Abu Ghraib, Sudan, and other contemporary mini-counterparts to see how feasible this line of thought is. This is a very important book and recommended to everyone who cares about the human race. Grady Harp, January 2005