Michael R. MarrusBesprekingen

Lo sterminio sistematico degli ebrei operato dai nazisti è un crimine che per modalità, dimensioni e motivazioni non trova forse paragoni nella storia umana. (fonte: Google Books)

I thought this book was well written and informative. It had a lot of good things to remember and was told in a way that will stay with you for awhile. I would recommend this book. 4 out of 5 stars.

18 octobre 1940 : le 'statut des Juifs' est publié. 31 juillet 1944 : le dernier convoi de déportés quitte Drancy pour Auschwitz. Ces deux faits et ces deux dates marquent le début et le terme de la politique du régime de Vichy envers les Juifs. Mise en oeuvre dès l'été 1940, la politique antisémite française aura donc d'abord été l'apanage du seul gouvernement de Vichy, sans qu'il soit besoin de pressions allemandes. Bilan : 75 000 déportés. Désormais ouvrage de référence, Vichy et les Juifs n'est pas seulement un remarquable document, qui étudie en détail les étapes d'une politique d'exclusion et montre avec rigueur quelles formes elle a revêtues au fil des ans ; c'est aussi une analyse exceptionnelle de précision, alimentée aux meilleures sources, de l'une des périodes les plus tragiques et les plus controversées de l'Histoire de France.

Great book for me, about to teach a 'debates on the holocaust' module in History at college. Summed up the various arguments well and has got me interested in a number of the historians mentioned. If you have any interst at all in finding out a little bit more about the Holocaust than personal testimonies it is essential reading.

The primary documents are amazing; nothing tells history like those who lived it and perpetuated it. Unfortunately, the style is (as expected) rather dull and dry. It's not going to keep you at the edge of your seat, and it does sometimes feel like you're plodding through mud, but the transcripts are worth it.½

This is a masterly, engrossing assessment of the vast Holocaust literature. In contrast to Lucy Dawidowicz's 1981 The Holocaust and the Historians, which protested the mistreatment of the topic by historians, Marrus (The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century, etc.) nonpolemically applies "the tools of historical, sociological, and political analysis to the events of the war years and to understand what happened to European Jewry as one would understand any other historical problem." Placing the Holocaust in a broad historical perspective, he links the centrality of anti-Semitism in Nazism to Hitler's anti-Jewish commitment and advances the argument that Nazi anti-Jewish policy wasn't set at an early point but evolved, with the plan for European-wide mass murder emerging after the military successes in 1940-41. In a keen effort to enter the minds and sensibilities of those who lived through the Holocaust, he undermines generalizations regarding European public opinion of Jews during the Holocaust, bystanders, Jewish ghetto leadership and Jewish "passivity" and "resistance." He evenhandedly surveys the various sources on Nazi offers to suspend the Final Solution and ransom the remaining Jews at the last stages of the war, and other rescue options.

Wonderfully researched and superbly written, this book is the finest available introduction to how historians write about the Holocaust. Forcefully arguing that the Holocaust must be demystified and studied as an event within history, Marrus summarizes the most recent, authoritative historical scholarship pertaining to critical themes on the Holocaust, such as the centrality of anti-Semitism to Nazism; the uniqueness of the Holocaust; the role of bystanders, collaborators, Jewish leaders.

Shoah, France