Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps

This book changed my entire view of the Holocaust. Until I read it, I was only really familiar with Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was both a labor and an extermination camp. While that was horrible enough, I also knew that some folks survived, which made things seem somehow bearable. However, these three camps were completely extermination camps. Except for a few people needed to do things like retrieve gold from teeth, everyone who was shipped to these camps was gassed. The brutal mechanization and utter unsurvivability of the system finally penetrated my brain. I can't recommend this book enough to anyone not yet aware of the horror of this time.

Highly praised in all reviews, and deservedly so, Arad's book is notable both for its intercalation of primary documents into his narrative and for his condemnations of Western Powers, the Poles, and the Armia Krajowa for their indifference to and oftentimes active collusion in operations of Poland's ghettos and death camps. It virtually concludes with a record of the Poles returning to the grounds of Treblinka in November 1945 to dig in the ground at the cremated remains of hundreds of thousands of Jews, madly looking for concealed diamonds and gold.

A good introduction, then, for scholars (and probably intelligent non-scholars) introducing themselves to Holocaust scholarship.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: die Vernichtungslager der Aktion Reinhardt