The Holocaust: Readings and Interpretations

"The Holocaust: Readings and Interpretations" raises important questions related to the study of the Holocaust and offers potential answers to these questions through interpretive essays from the field's leading scholars, many with differing opinions and points of view. The book emphasizes the complexity of the subject, while it seeks to provide an understanding of an historical event that for many people still defies comprehension. Although the attempted annihilation of European Jews by Hitler's Third Reich occurred between 1933 and 1945, the roots of anti-Semitism are at least two millennia old. Each of the book's nine chapters raises relevant questions regarding the Holocaust: its historical context, the factors, which made it possible, its victims and perpetrators, responses to it by individuals, groups, and nations, issues of gender, and the philosophical and theological implications. The concluding section of the book explores the latest scholarship in the field through analysis and evaluation of the topics which attract historians today.