The Atlas of the Holocaust: In Answer to Historical Revisionists
Written: Oct 30 '02 (Updated Feb 11 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Detailed and complete
Cons: sometimes too detailed. Hard to find specific sites if that's your purpose
The Bottom Line: A must have for any serious researcher of the period.
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| naphtalia's Full Review: Atlas of the Holocaust Books |
The Atlas of the Holocaust is a magnificent achievement in historical research. It provides a comprehensive record of the attempted genocide of the Jewish people of Europe during the Second World War.
Written and compiled by Martin Gilbert, the book includes 316 maps drawn by the author for this book. All of them are fully annotated and have their basis on a wide range of sources.
Besides the maps, the atlas provides clearly written text. Arranged chronologically, it moves the reader/researcher through the various phases of Holocaust history beginning with the anti-Semitic occurrences in Germany between the World Wars. It continues with the conquest of countries in which Jews had lived and played vital roles for hundreds of years.
The book includes details of random killings as well as details about the more systematic mass expulsion from thousands of towns and villages. He details the period in which ghettos were established, the starvation of Jews within those walled areas, the establishment of and deportation to the death and slave-labor camps. There is factual material here about the death marches and the executions from the beginning of the Holocaust all the way through the liberation by the Allies.
The material in the book is presented chronologically. For a historian interested in the arc of events, this is perfect. For someone like myself who was interested in locating particular villages and learning their fate, this can be problematic. Because the material is chronological, it is not possible to examine all the material about one region together. However, given the use that most people will put this book to, this is a good and logical approach. The one improvement this book might make is to have an index of place names. I'm not sure, however, how this would work as the Nazis often renamed places when they came through. Other places changed names over the year depending on whether the Romanians, Poles, Russians or Czechs were in charge at a particular moment in history.
The maps are a useful tool in understanding and explaining the scope of the Holocaust. Besides the atrocities that the maps spell out, Gilbert also gives us maps that show us the documented activities of partisans fighting against the Nazis, and avenues of escape and rescue.
From a historians point of view, the maps are a tool for putting the Holocaust into a context within the larger scope of the war in Europe itself. The map traces the deportation of the Jews as various lands were conquered. It also tells about those places that refused to agree to deportation.
Martin Gilbert has done a superb job of putting the material together. While historical revisionists claim that no such event as the Holocaust occurred, he provides detailed, verified and supported statistical and historical information that say it did. Some say that the number of Jews killed was less than six million. Through his work, Gilbert demonstrates just how close to that number he can come. And lest we forget, the Nazis murdered a nearly equal number of other including Poles, Jehovahs' Witnesses, homosexuals, political prisoners, Rom, and Sinti to name a few. These were not the soldiers of the battlefield, or the collateral damage of attacks. These were people systematically identified, tortured and killed.
Gilbert admits that his work, extensive as it is, is still incomplete. However, for the serious student of history, this book is a must.
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For more of my reviews regarding Holocaust related topics, follow any of the links below:
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale
A Visit to Auschwitz
The Holocaust Industry
Into the Arms of Strangers: Tales from the Kindertransport
Recommended:
Yes
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