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Review
| Auschwitz: A New History, by Laurence Rees. New York: Public Affairs Books, 2005. 327 pages. $30.00, cloth.
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| This is a highly readable narrative history of the most notorious Nazi death camp and its central role in Germany's genocidal project. Relying heavily upon over 100 interviews of both perpetrators and survivors as well as post-1990 scholarship, Auschwitz: A New History is a detailed portrait of the origins, development and daily operations of this massive Nazi killing center. An experienced documentary producer for the BBC, the author has a strong background in twentieth century history, having produced a major television series and related book on Nazism (The Nazis: A Warning From History) and one on Auschwitz (Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State). The book's introduction sets the tone for the remainder of the volume and is informed by Rees' extensive experience in researching war crimes and human rights violations. In it he compares perpetrators of gross human rights violations in the Soviet Union and Japanese war criminals with German perpetrators. In contrast to the fear of retribution articulated by Soviet perpetrators or the commitment to militaristic ideals stated by Japanese perpetrators, Rees argues that German war criminals often articulated internalized justifications for participation in mass killing, taking ownership of the process and asserting control over their actions. |
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Regarding survivors, Rees focuses primarily but not exclusively on Jews, since they were Nazism's most prominent victims. By incorporating stories of survivors who experienced all four stages of destruction described by Raul Hilberg in The Destruction of the European Jews (identification, expropriation, concentration and annihilation), Rees outlines the path of the "final solution" and how the cumulative radicalization of Nazi policy towards the Jews eventually made Auschwitz into a mass killing center. The author contends that the stories of both perpetrators and survivors highlight the power of situational factors to influence behavior, either for good or for evil, and he states that although individuals still must make choices about how to behave, the situations in which they find themselves can be the decisive factors in those choices. |
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Following the introduction, the narrative proceeds from Auschwitz' origins as a concentration camp in occupied Poland to its gradual expansion as a labor camp, and eventually to its role as a death factory. Rees integrates the history of the Auschwitz camp complex with the much broader plan to "Germanize" conquered areas of Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, with the ultimate goal being the creation of a "racial state" without Jews and in which Slavs were a subservient labor force for their Aryan masters. By interweaving the personal ambitions of camp commander Rudolf Hoss with the broader ideological imperatives of Nazi leaders such as Heinrich Himmler, Rees shows how the Nazi plan for a "demographic revolution" in the East was operationalized by individuals such as Hoss, by SS guards, and by their accomplices in German business, such as I. G. Farben. The author's reliance on eyewitness testimony brings the huge scale of the mass killing and the daily human degradation at Auschwitz into precise focus. Particularly effective is his reliance on survivor and perpetrator testimonies to illustrate the camp's stages of development and the implementation of camp procedures and practices (for example, how some prisoners survived by making arrangements with Kapos and SS guards). Another important aspect is Rees' description of the liberation of Auschwitz and the subsequent obstacles faced by survivors who encountered great difficulties in returning home, in trying to evade cruelties sometimes enacted by the Soviet Army and in deciding how to rebuild their lives when their families had been killed or dispersed. Rees also discusses the relative lack of retribution and justice faced by the Auschwitz SS and their collaborators after liberation, a dimension which is often overlooked. |
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Auschwitz: A New History is very helpful to faculty desiring a well-written history of the Auschwitz camp and its role in the "final solution". As a useful synthesis of recent scholarship on the topic, it functions best as a teacher resource to inform lectures and other learning activities about Auschwitz. If assigned to students, however, it could serve as a supplement to narrative histories of the Holocaust such as Leni Yahil's The Holocaust, Holocaust: A History by Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, and Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews. Instructors who seek a more detailed study of the origins and operations of Auschwitz should investigate the sources cited in Auschwitz: A New History, while readers seeking deeper understanding of the motivations and choices made by perpetrators should examine James Waller's Becoming Evil, which provides the most comprehensive and incisive analysis of the factors influencing perpetrator behavior. |
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Huntingdon Central Regional High School
Flemington, New Jersey |
William R. Fernekes |
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