I had the opportunity to use Yehuda Bauer's book in a universtiy course on the history of the Holocaust two years ago. Now that I am a history teacher, I found myself looking for the text that I foolishly sold. In his book Bauer provides an overview of the Jewish people and then takes you through the the major events (WWI, the Weimar Republic, rise of Hitler)in history and how they contributed to the massacre of millions in the Holocaust. Bauer's chapter by chapter analysis of the events surrounding the Holocaust is the reason that I came back to look for the text. Whether you are interested in this era of history or are perhaps an educator about to teach it, you will find valuable information within this book to help you synthesize and present the information. I plan to use parts of this book in the World History class that I am teaching.

Gun control is a burning issue in America today. Bauer raises legitiate concerns about this issue in relation to the ability of the Jewish people to protect themselves from tyranny and extermination during the Nazi era. Bauer discusses the inability of the Jewish people to defend themselves before, and during, the Holocaust because of anti-gun laws which disarmed the civilian population. Though commentary on armed resistance is only a portion of the book; this section alone made the writing worth the money spent, and has profoundly affected my stance on private gun ownership.

There are several books on the negotiations the Nazis forced the Jewish people into. This racket for hypothetic survival had to be analyzed through time and this is what the author does to perfection.

The progressive superposition of the Nazi emigration policy and their attempt to replace, in the secret negotiations with the allies for a separate peace with the west, Hitler's head by the Jewish lives they were cynically harvesting is clearly shown here.

As a Christian reviewer, I think that the author has duly treated with dignity the debate over Kasztner's negotiations and money aspects in Jewish survival matters. It was taking crazy politics of post-war periods to blame the ones who had saved whoever they could by every means they could find.

How can someone blame another human beings for having first taken care of his foes and family.

The father of the reviewer resisted the anti-semitic nazi madness in France and for that shared for several years the Jewish fate in Buchenwald, Flossenburg and Mauthausen. It was an "unnecessary experience" (to quote an Auschwitz survivor) but as Yeshuda Bauer rightfully states in his final words: these people should not be juged by their success or failure in resisting criminal authorities, but by the answer to a basic moral question: did they try? And try they did.

People dying in the concentration camps begged survivors letting them sware they would withness their suffering to the world: some of their voices have joined in Yeshuda Bauer's lines. The testimony should be read, and the respect for the victim extended to the author who testified for them.

I had always thought of myself as Jewish, always celebrated the holidays with my parents at home. But then I was bat-mitzvah age and suddenly I didn't want to go to synagogue and memorize hebrew texts. I wanted to do something more meaningful to myself. And so we, as a family, shopped around. We spent hours at libraries and read countless books about Jewish heritage and the religion, finally stumbling upon Secular Humanistic Judaism. It fit us exactly. We think of Judaism as our heritage and religion, though in a modern scientific age we'd given up believing in the Bible literally. One line in the introduction of this book states something like, 'Our God does not care whether or not we eat tuna with mayo.' And we agree wholeheartedly. So if you're looking to understand these new movements of Judaism, beyond reformed, I recommed this book. It traces the history of the movement through powerful Jewish thinkers and writers of the centuries. I encourage you to explore, find what Judaism means to you, to shop around.

Rethinking the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer is an excellent historical review of the various issues that are raised by the Holocaust. Bauer is one of the preeminent holocaust historians and this book will only reenforce his place in historical studies.

The book reviews most of the recent historical issues ranging from the holocausts place in history to a comparison with more recent genocides. The central thesis is that what seperates the holocaust from the more recent genocides is not the necessarily the evil of the act. What has happened in Africa or Bosnia is not less evil or horrible than what the Nazis did. However, the African and Bosnian genocides were more significanly limited in scope. The Nazi plan was to hunt down the Jews where ever they lived and to eliminate them as a race. This desire seperates the holocaust from all other genocides.

The most interesting chapter discuses the theology of the holocaust. The central theological difficulty of the holocaust is how to reconcile an all powerful God with one that is just. The question being how could a just God who had the power to stop the death of millions not stop that murder. One conclusion is that God is all powerful or just, but not both. Bauer does not have any real answers, and there might not be any; however, the discussion is thought provoking and leads to furhter readings. This chapter was worth reading the book.

Affirming the rational explicability and non-inevitability of the Holocaust, this book by Bauer, preeminent scholar of the Holocaust and former director of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Israel's Yad Vashem, offers a compelling, conceptually sophisticated historiographic analysis of the critical issues debated by historians in the field. Demonstrating prodigious learning and persistent intellectual clarity, grounded in his own prior research yet thoughtfully considerate and accepting of nuanced newer approaches, Bauer persuasively distinguishes other genocides from the unprecedented Jewish Holocaust, provides searching critiques of various scholars' overarching explanations of the reasons for the Holocaust (especially those of Bauman, Aly, and Goldhagen) while presenting his own, and cogently explores the range of problematic judgments on topics such as Jewish armed and unarmed resistance, ghetto Judenrate behavior, the possibilities of rescue, and the relationship between the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. Less successful are the book's foray into gender analysis and the Holocaust and its sarcastic rant against Orthodox Jewish theological confrontations with the topic. In all other respects, however, this enormously illuminating tome, reflecting a humanistically motivated lifetime of engaged scholarship into the Holocaust, deserves the undivided attention of scholars and laypersons like. B. Kraut

I have to thank the New York Times Book Review for inducing me to read the book. Because it is so painful to read abot the Shoah and because most of the facts are already imprinted in my brain, I avoid books on the subject. But I wanted to know what was going on, as some of the revisionist ideas had filtered through and were bothering me. I found everything I wanted in this book, plus a lot more. The trauma is there, so the more we know and understand, the better.

This book and the lies it inherits is just another example of those books which are actually a big help for holocaust deniers because it's so stacked with obvious lies and historic inaccuracies that only the historically illiterate can take this fairy tale serious and the revisionist historians again have another example of a wanna-be eyewitness who actually is a professional liar and supports their absurd thesis that there were no gas chambers at all.

I wish that every Holocaust denier and revisionist could be made to read this book.

Many books about Auschwitz are filled with dry narrations. It seems like people are afraid to talk about the subject, like they have the need to be politically correct or not to hurt anyone. I understand why but if you decide to write a book about subject do a good job regardless of the circumstances. This book relates the facts and everyday life in the camp the way it was. An author shares his feelings and thoughts. He describes behaviors (sometimes worse than barbaric) and survival instinct in the purest basic form. I liked this book. It is written well and it keeps reader at full attention. Chapters and story line flows smoothly. It's a book that describes harsh reality of the concentration camp that I wish no one every would have to go through again. If you liked this book there is also a similar one written by Dr. Perl called "I was a doctor in Auschwitz". Dr. Perl was a woman that went through the same thing as Muller but in the female part of the camp.