The Years of Extermination
The last word on the Holocaust by the world's leading expert on the subject. The extermination of the Jews of Europe triggers
disbelief. This volume presents a thorough historical study of the events while attempting to keep some of the traces of the primary sense of disbelief.
The work is based on a vast array of contemporary sources and recent historical literature. Its interpretive framework is founded on the lethal impact of several converging factors: The growing
crisis and the collapse of liberal democracy throughout continental Europe on the eve of the war and during its first year, and the anti-Semitic tradition it exacerbated; the raging anti-Jewish
campaign of Adolf Hitler's Germany and the readiness of its leader, at a given point in time, to implement his
extermination threats against the Jews; the course of the war that became total in 1941 and offered Hitler the
context and the circumstances to launch the "Final Solution."
The Holocaust as history extends beyond the usual analysis of German policies, decisions, and measures that led to this most systematic and sustained of modern genocides. It includes the
reactions of the surrounding world (authorities, populations, churches, social elites), related facets of everyday life throughout the continent, and their individual expressions. All these
elements demand, as is attempted here, one single integrated narration.
The history of the victims is an intrinsic part of this overall context; their attitudes (hope, despair, passivity, collaboration, and resistance) found expression in both collective responses
and individual testimonies. Here, the individual voices are weaved into the overall narrative and are the main carriers of disbelief: Some of them end in liberation, most are cut by
extermination.
Pub. Date: April 2008
Author : Saul FriedlÄnder
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN-13: 9780060930486
ISBN: 0060930489
Editorial Reviews - Years of Extermination - The Washington Post - Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
Friedländer's book offers a useful, updated panorama of the events of the Holocaust.
The New York Times - Richard J. Evans
What raises The Years of Extermination to the level of literature, however, is the skilled interweaving of individual testimony with the broader depiction of events. Friedländer never lets the
reader forget the human and personal meanings of the historical processes he is describing. By and large, he avoids the sometimes unreliable testimony of memoirs for the greater immediacy of
contemporary diaries and letters, though he also makes good use of witness statements at postwar trials. The result is an account of unparalleled vividness and power that reads like a novel.
Publishers Weekly
In the second volume of his essential history of Nazi Germany and the Jews, one of the great historians of the Holocaust provides a rich, vivid depiction of Jewish life from France to Ukraine,
Greece to Norway, in its most tragic period, drawing especially on hundreds of diaries written by Jews during their ordeal, depicting a world collapsing on its inhabitants, along with the
thousands of humiliating persecutions that Jews suffered on their way to extermination. Friedländer also provides insightful discussions of the many interpretive controversies that still surround
the history of Nazi Germany. He has been party to many of the debates, and he remains attuned to the most recent historical research.
Friedländer knows the bureaucratic workings of the Third Reich as well as anyone, but refuses to see in that alone the explanation for the Holocaust. Instead, he focuses largely on cultural and
ideological factors. He considers other factors, such as "the crisis of liberalism," but these were not the essential motives for the Holocaust, which, Friedländer says, was driven by sheer
hatred of Jews, by "a redemptive anti-Semitism" espoused by Hitler, a belief that Germans could thrive only
through the utter destruction of Jews. This is a masterful synthesis that draws on a lifetime of learning and research. (Apr. 10)
Meet the author
Born in Prague, Saul FriedlÄnder spent his boyhood in Nazi-occupied France. He is a professor of history at UCLA, and has written numerous books on Nazi Germany and World War II.