This weighty tome of 836 pages was designed as a summary of where the study and historiography of holocaust research stood a few years ago (1998). There are coherently arranged sections such as race and anti-semitism in nazi ideology, Jewish leadership and resistance, the rescuers and the survivor experience. The essays, written by a large number of contributors, are mostly in-depth and richly sourced studies. This reviewer found particularly insightful Louise London's account of the British government's response to German treatment of the Jews and Randolph Braham's summary of the holocaust in Hungary. Inevitably, the anthology has become a little outdated. Sources from former Soviet satellite countries are shedding new light on some issues and, in my opinion, holocaust denial arguments (however spurious) need more treatment in a book claiming to be a summary of "where we are and where we need to go."

One of the greatest tragedies of the Holocaust besides the event itself, is the disremebering of five million non-Jewish Holocaust victims. Killed in the same camps, using the same vile methods of extermination and for the same profane reasons, these forgoten sufferers have been reduced to a cipher at the footnote of this event. The Nazis called for the TOTAL anhililation of Europe's Gypsies in two writen decrees, making claims of Jewish exclusivity to Holocaust suffering indefensible and dishonest. It is imperative that we speak of 11 million Holocaust victims if we are to do justice to truth. This book is a candle in the darkness. I can only hope it's flame gets brighter.