Depiction of Holocaust in The War Against the Jews by Lucy Dawidowicz - Book Report/Review Example

10 December 2008 The War against the Jews: A Critical Book Review The imaginative, factual book The War against the Jews authored by Lucy Dawidowicz in 1975 is a striking work that vividly and methodically describes the details of the terrifying attack of annihilation forged against the European Jews by Hitler’s regime. The book, in essence, examines the Holocaust of the European Jews during World War II. With so many works published regarding the subject, this book distinguishes itself as a benchmark. In the book, Dawidowicz highlights attention to the most basic questions concerning the appalling prescribed form of race murder: How is it possible that a modern, developed and industrial country like Germany could have committed a deliberate rule of terror against an entire group of people because they were of another race? The simple answer is that the Holocaust appears to have happened because, for the first time in modern history, it was both administratively and organizationally plausible. In other words, the Nazis had both the system and the drive to commit the mass murder. Dawidowicz organized the book into three parts, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich and the institutional Nazi machinery essential in performing the extermination of Jews. The author first situated the Nazis in a framework of modern anti-Semitism, warning readers to avoid the misconception of linking Hitler with early modern anti-Semitism. Dawidowicz next pursued the gradual heightening of anti-Semitism from anti-Jewish laws to the building of concentration camps and ghettoes, and moving up to the creation of death facilities. All over the first part of the book the author puts together a compelling case that the Nazi crusade of world expansion was equally committed to performing a world conflict against Jews. Dawidowicz contends that Hitler might not have had a thoroughly thought out plan of committing the Holocaust around 1918, but through opportunism and novelty he was almost able to completely fulfill the objective of exterminating the world of Jews. The Nazi regime was able to focus all of its energy, political and physical, into such a destructive and prolonged campaign against the Jews, and was thus especially able to force the bloodiest results. Dawidowicz’s style guides the reader through several parts of the Holocaust phenomenon with a careful, detailed and systematic account of the social, economic, and political influences encircling the evil plan against Jews. In the first section of the book, entitled "The Final Solution", the author follows the beginnings and growth of anti-Semitism, a type of racism so destructive it almost succeeded in the extermination of all Jews from Europe. In following the beginnings and origins of the Nazis and their followers, the author describes how the rise of National Socialism rooted its foundation on blame and anger against the Jews. Dawidowicz goes on to analyze the history of the Jewish reaction to the emergence of the Nazis and their harsh actions toward the Jews. She points out that German Jews themselves were in the beginning undecided over the proper reaction to the Third Reich, as there were those who thought that the Nazis would be a temporary political occurrence. The author then describes how, as the actions of the Nazi regime turned increasingly concentrated on extermination, Jewish communities adjusted to change and started to form alternative communities and post resistance. The most horrifying part illustrates the increasing awareness that German campaigns against Jews were not merely “the destructive debris of a fascist war against the capitalist order, rather were part of a deliberate design to exterminate the Jews” (Dawidowicz 46). Dawidowicz argues that Hitler persisted on his actions to eliminate Jewish populations throughout Europe even sacrificing practical wartime actions such as moving troops and securing supplies. For instance, the author points out that Hitler purposefully defered railcars offering supplies to front line troops in the Soviet Union so that Jews could be transported by rail from the Soviet Union to death camps (Dawidowicz 37). The completion of the attack was implemented in the ghettos and little towns of Poland and Germany as well as in a connection of forced labor camps and concentration camps all over Eastern Europe. In the second section of the book, ""The Holocaust", the author graphically narrates how the condition of the Jews little by little worsened and how the violence and dispossession grew methodically increasingly horrifying day by day. Occupants of camps or ghettos lived under unbelievable difficulty and deprivation, fighting helplessly against hunger, disease, exposure to extremes of temperature and weather, and of course, to the harsh brutality of the Nazi regime. The book is interesting historical material, specifying the methods in which Jewish groups both within the ghettos and the death camps struggled together to make the best out of a seemingly hopeless situation. The third part of the book is dedicated to a geographic location dissection of the fate of Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe. Dawidowicz builds a short historical summary of Jewish history in each country, describing how it was to live during the war, and supplies statistical figures on the numbers of victims of the Holocaust for each nation. The author includes a long bibliography for future research. Dawidowicz explains that historians do not argue the existence of the Holocaust. People who deny the existence of the Holocaust live in a fantasy world in which overwhelming quantities of evidence can simply be ignored. The Holocaust is a proven historical event. No one disputes that the Nazi authorities killed millions of European Jews. What is still a matter of debate is the manner to which this was a plan from the beginning or whether it was something that the Nazis began doing in a gradual and relatively little by little process and subsequently decided to organize on a bigger scale. That they ended up performing it on a mass scale is also proven as fact according to the author. But Dawidowicz views it all as a secret plan of Hitler early in his career (94), although the proof remains that while there are facts that prove that Hitler was aware of the murder of Jews and that he even supported it, there is no proof that he ever had any kind of plan in his mind about how it would be committed. Based on the author’s account, the planning took place at a lower position, and it did not take place mainly because Hitler wanted it to happen. There is no piece of paper or evidence in another form on which Hitler wrote down "Annihilate all the Jews in Europe". Comments This well written book of the roots and development of the Holocaust is rich in history. It offers a powerful and detailed background of Nazism and narrates the horrifying but probable theory that World War II was intended partly to cover up for the Holocaust that was planned. It provides a chilling look inside the ghettos of Eastern Europe and shows how despicable their life was and also how life did not end immediately despite the horrors forced upon the Jews. Where she focuses her attention, she provides a strong and complete sketch and background. Dawidowiczs was able to hold my attention through the dark realities of the Holocaust as no other writer has. I believe it is a definitive work on the formation of European, specifically German anti-semitism. She reveals how the enlightenment beliefs of individual autonomy challenged the belief of the clan and ethnic nationalism held so firmly by the Nazis. Hitler rejected his own Catholic past, where the enlightenment began. He displaced the God of the Jews and Christians with the Gods of Nordic mythology. Individuals were of no importance and in Hitlers world view only the clan was important. Dawidowiczs narrates how Hitler found fertile soil for his deep hatred of Jews in Europe’s extended history of anti-semitism. She describes in appaling detail how Hitler took anti-semitism into Europe. Hitler, according to Dawidowicz, employed the ideals of ethnicity and tribalism to sell the idea to the Germans that they were under attack from within by a disease called Judaism that would demolish them if they did not destroy the Jews first. Thus, there is "the final solution". The book is heart breaking and arouses sympathy. It vividly recounts the ways in which Jews were fooled and betrayed by the authorities, assured that they were being resettled rather than being lined up to be exterminated. Dawidowicz narrates with compassion, covering sensitive issues, as one reads of lives destructed, families torn apart, and widespread rape, and murder. The book is probably one of the most complete, well documented books to have been written on the topic of the Holocaust. It is recommended for anyone with an interest in the subject. Dawidowicz’s approach is easy to read. She manages to pull the reader along through a terrifying topic with clear and precise narration. The employment of charts and graphs to illustrate the decrease in pre and post war Jews is astounding and a good description of the brutality of Nazi brutality and anger. It is ironic though that the reason of Nazis for the annihilation of Jews was that they were fearful of them. Although they believed themselves to be Nordic superhuman, their psychological fear led to murder. I believe that all serious students of history should read this book. This book supplies in specific details how the German authorities persuaded themselves that genocide was not only right and legal, but essential for their survival. Initially, I expected that the book was going to describe one brutality after another, but it explains to the reader reasons and motives of why it happened. Of course, there is a sufficient amount of the terror contained in the book. However, I would have enjoyed a broader review of all of the holocaust crimes across Europe, although there are limits to the contents of any one book. This book is a good beginning to understand why the Holocaust took place. Lucy Dawidowiczs The War against the Jews is probably one of the first works on the Holocaust that most people, including me, have read. A reason for this is that it is not very long and is only one volume. Another reason is that it appeared in the 1970s, when the general reading public all of a sudden became intrigued with the Holocaust. Weaknesses of the Book However, the book does not go beyond the death camps and the western boundaries of Germany. Although an appendix describes the fate of all of Europes Jews, the majority of the book does not include the progression of brutality in Western and Southern Europe. Perhaps there was not much to say as majority of the Jews ended up in the ghettos but she does not clarify this until in the appendix. Furthermore, Dawidowicz makes little effort to talk about life in the labor camps or death camps. Although most Jews there were facing death and practically no hope of survival, this book does not cover this topic. Nevertheless, this book offers an outstanding background to the Holocaust, to the inhumanity of the Nazis, and to the efforts and perseverance of the Jews to never give up hope. Furthermore, there may be some mistakes of fact in the book. For example, one of the shortcomings of the author as a historian is the manner to which she conceals or ignores proof that Jewish authorities in the ghettoes worked with the Nazis, although often with the best of intentions, because they at first could not imagine that the Nazis actually really intended to murder them. In addition, Dawidowicz as much as possible avoided argument in the narration, and the work is probably more unsettling because the author seems to refuse to engage in a condemnation of the Nazi regime. However, the narrative follows a chronological approach within each section and is interestingly written. Beyond the minor considerations, The War against the Jews is an outstanding historical work on a background of the Holocaust. It provides a detailed, convincing narration of one of mankind’s most horrifying historical periods. In other parts of the book, Dawidowicz uses a simple and statistically illiterate method of estimating the number of Jews who died. More significantly, her general theory that Hitler had a master plan to annihilate all of the Jews starting from early in his career and then gave huge efforts to perform is not backed up by evidence. Conclusion This book is the story of those Jews who died and those survived the largest mass murder in recorded history. These are the details ordinary people do not know. The book exhibits the strength and weakness of a people on the brink of annihilation. It is unbiased in the sense that it does not show the Jews as a superior race overcoming their hardship, nor as an inferior race hopeless and surrendering, waiting to die. Rather it depicts them as any other group of human beings responding to their circumstances in a huge assortment of ways. Dawidowiczs book, exhaustively tries to analyze the Holocaust by looking first at the history of German anti-Semitism from its start, through its 19th century rebirth, to its deliberately planned policy under Hitler. The author then looks at the Jewish reaction to the Nazi threat, accustomed to a century old chain of passive to active antagonism. This is possibly the longest amount of time I have ever expended in reading a book. After reading a page or two, particularly in the second half of the book, I would in general have to put it down for a few days to read some lighter material. Overall, I think it took me about seven to eight months to read. But I would include it in the best books I have read. For people who want to understand what happened to the Jews during World War II, or are simply interested in filling in some of the gaps from history, then I would definitely recommend this vividly penetrating work. Dawidowicz describes the death camps only in an appendix, perhaps because their story is so common and well known. She focuses instead on the composition and maintenance of the ghettos of Poland, essentially a different, inner city type of concentration camp. The author further describes institutions formed by the Nazis for control, such as the Judenrat, brilliantly served to crack the Jewish spirit by little by little. The mistaken optimism, which reasons that conditions that are terrible cannot get worse, collapses when the trap has already unfolded, and hopelessness remains. The courageous resistance in the Warsaw ghetto, fated by its tardiness, is well documented, and an effort to justify the ghetto mentality is difficult to accept by subsequent generations who see the atrociousness of the tragedy in retrospect. In my opinion, this book by Dawidowicz is beneficial reading. If I am asked why this book is so interesting, I will reply by saying that I believe that the focus of the book, which is the Nazi program, was both an example of a successful and terrifying enterprise, the maneuvering and exploitation of public consciousness to permit the commitment of a completely evil agenda. Works Cited Dawidowicz, Lucy. The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945. New York: Bantam Book, 1986. Read More