Why?: Explaining the Holocaust

While visiting the Holocaust museum in Israel last year, I often asked myself "Why?" And as I exited through the gift shop (some things never change) I saw this book and hoped it would answer my question.

The book is extremely well written and explains how and why the Holocaust happened from examining key questions: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why murder? Why so fast and sweeping? Why didn't more victims fight back? Why such limited help from outside? I learned so much!

One strength of the book is the final chapter which examines legacies and lessons that are relevant to our time in a very thoughtful and thought-provoking manner.

Why? I understand much more than before I read this book, but in a fundamental way, that question remains show more partly unanswerable in my mind. show less

Reading this book is like having gauze removed from your eyes. Even if you are familiar with the Holocaust, Hayes, by using a multidisciplinary approach, provides an acuity with is astounding. Importantly, many of his observations have applications to any culture in which authoritarianism threatens empathy and diversity. Thus, he dates the beginning of the Holocaust to a day in 1933 when Germany's leading industrialists caved in to Hitler's demand that they fire all Jewish employees. If they had refused, history might have taken a different course. Which is why he ends his work with a German proverb: "Beware the beginnings." Hayes writes beautifully, and having been trained as an economic historian, he often frames his arguments in a show more numerical fashion--which aids understanding. This is a magnificent work. show less

Very sober and unsentimental book, which is a rarity for this subject. Isn't afraid to bust myths that were created with the best of intentions, or to review controversial topics like the lack of real resistance. Still, for a book that sets itself the premise of answering why, there's a lot more how, & the concluding wrap-up that attempts to use the established facts to establish the why falls short of the aim. Perhaps fundamentally an unanswerable question, I still got a lot closer to the why reading Ryback's Hitler's Private Library which lays out some of the fundamental influences in his thinking and the antisemitism of the era.

This book was eye-opening in a way I could not have guessed. My knowledge of this event was clearly not thorough, even though I thought I understood it. I didn't. Great educator. "Wehret den Anfängen."

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