Books on the Shoah that make the points worth making
By Jerusalem Post Staff

(May 1) - In his Shabbat Hagadol discourse, my rabbi, Abraham Feder, identified two important "lessons of the Holocaust." The lesson for the world-at-large: evil is a reality - and it did not die with the defeat of the Germans in World War II. And, the lesson for the Jews: never again should Jews allow themselves to depend on anyone else for their survival. To Order...

Not many of the large number of books published each year about the Shoah come close to underscoring this worthy message. My sense is that too many Holocaust titles are published, and that in some perverse way, the deluge trivializes the catastrophe.

And, yet, there is a need, for each generation, to study, write, and teach about the Shoah.

In the era of the quick cyberspace skim, certain books about the Shoah - whether in print or not - deserve to be tracked down, read, and retained in home libraries.

To that end, here is my short-list of essential Holocaust reading. It begins with a book that, strictly speaking, is not exclusively about the Shoah. But for pure "goosebump value," it is a good place to start.

On Tisha B'Av 1938, Ze'ev Jabotinsky gave a speech to the Jews of Warsaw. Here, according to Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky by Shmuel Katz (Barricade Books), is what he said:

"For three years I have been imploring you, Jews of Poland, the crown of world Jewry, appealing to you, warning you unceasingly that the catastrophe is nigh. My hair has turned white and I have grown old over these years, for my heart is bleeding that you, dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spew forth its fires of destruction. I see a horrible vision. Time is growing short for you to be spared. I know you cannot see it, for you are troubled and confused by everyday concerns...Listen to my words at this, the twelfth hour. For God's sake: let everyone save himself, so long as there is time to do so, for time is running short."

IF YOU READ only one general history of the Holocaust, it should be Martin Gilbert's The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During The Second World War (Holt Rinehart Winston).

Other excellent general histories of the Shoah include Nora Levin's The Holocaust: The destruction of European Jewry 1933-1945 (Schocken), and The War Against The Jews 1933-1945 by Lucy Dawidowicz. Leni Yahil's The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry 1932-1945 (Oxford), originally published in Hebrew, is also worthy. Then there is the definitive three volume The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg (Holmes & Meier).

WHAT DID THE Jewish world know and when did it know it? Banned no more, and essential reading, is Ben Hecht's Perfidy (Julian Messner). He tells the story of a lawsuit brought by Rudolph Kastner, a Jewish Agency official, against the man who accused him of collaborating with the Nazis. If you want to understand why, to this day, the disciples of Jabotinsky and the disciples of Ben-Gurion are uneasy with one another, read Perfidy.

Also in this genre are: Alex Weisberg's Advocate for the Dead: The Story of Joel Brand (Andre Deutsch); also published by Criterion under the title Desperate Mission: Joel Brand's Story as told by Alex Weisberg; The Summer That Bled: The Biography of Hannah Szenes by Anthony Masters (St. Martin's); Shake Heaven & Earth: Peter Bergson And the Struggle to Rescue the Jews of Europe by Louis Rapoport (Gefen). Shabtai Teveth's Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust (Harcourt Brace); The Seventh Million by Tom Segev (Hill and Wang); and Were We Our Brothers' Keepers: The Public Response of American Jews to the Holocaust 1938-1944 by Haskel Lookstein (Hartmore House).

WHAT DID THE Allies know and when did they know it? For this genre, I'd go with an old standard, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy by Arthur Morse (Random House), which tells the no longer shocking story of what FDR didn't do to save the Jews from destruction. But also worth reading are: Martin Gilbert's Auschwitz and the Allies: A Devastating Account of How the Allies Responded to the News of Hitler's Mass Murder (Henry Holt); Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler's 'Final Solution' (Penguin); Beyond Belief, Deborah Lipstadt (Free Press). And, the devastating work by David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945.

AND WHERE WERE our fellow Semites during the war? The simple answer can be found in: Joseph Schechtman's The Mufti and the Fuehrer: The Story of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and His Unholy Alliance with Nazism (Thomas Yoseloff).

As for what the average Germans knew, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners (Knopf) tells the story.

AS FOR WHAT the Church knew, this is another instance where you need read only one book: John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Viking).

Never overlook the Encyclopedia Judaica. Its entry on the Holocaust - narrative, maps, and photographs - provides sufficient material for anyone who needs a solid basic overview of the subject.

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