This 175 page book is a pictorial
history of
the Holocaust.
The text covers the origins of the Holocaust, who and how it was carried out, the
victims, and some of the impact of the Holocaust.
Just from the perspective of the text, it's an interesting book that would make a good addition to one's
library.
But . . . it's the
photographs which carry the book out of the realm of
"a good addition to one's library" and into the realm of
"an absolutely essential part of one's library".
Let's have a look at a few of them:
- page 12 has a photo of three Nazi storm troopers blocking the entrance to a Jewish shop
- page 17 has a photo of a forlorn looking man in Hungary waiting to be sent to a death camp
- page 19's contribution is a document prepared by the Nazi's showing Roosevelt's Jewish ancestry
- there's a picture of Goebbels on page 22 along with a photo of the Nazi leadership in 1933 on page 23
- page 45 has a photo of a woman being paraded around Munich with a sign hanging around her neck proclaiming that she'd been "intimate" with a Jew
- we have Jews washing the street on their hands and knees on page 50
- a smiling Anne Frank makes an appearance on page 57
- there's a photo of a pile of naked female bodies on page 68
- you probably don't want your children to see the picture on page 71
- page 80 has a Lithuanian caning a Jew in Riga
- we have a German soldier about to execute a mother and her child on page 82
That's enough. You get the general idea (and the photos don't get any more pleasant).
Let there be no doubt about it - this is an obscene book but it's dealing with an obscene subject and it does it in a way which, somehow, manages to not be exploitative or disrespectful.
You just might not want to keep it where someone can come across it by accident.
Then again, maybe you should . . .
...and GOD CRIED / The Holocaust Remembered by Charles Lawliss;
Copyright © 1994 Wieser & Wieser, Inc.;
published by JG Press, Inc.;
ISBN 1-57215-036-X