Introducing The Holocaust - Softcover

Bresheeth, Haim; Hood, Stuart; Jansz, Litza

3.7

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9781840461213: Introducing The Holocaust

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840461217 ISBN 13: 9781840461213

Publisher: Icon,Totem Books, 2002

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Who needs yet another book on the Holocaust? Sadly, most of us. The vast amount of serious research work on the Holocaust never reaches the general public, and our notions of it are at the mercy of distortion and myth. As a result, it is regarded as a horrific drama played out only between Nazi executioners and ghetto Jewish victims - in short, a single aberration of history. "Introducing the Holocaust" dissolves this stereotype and places the Holocaust where it belongs - at the centre of modern European and world history. If such an event is not to be repeated, it is crucial to understand that genocide is a constant widespread threat to world humanity, as our news media have made plain, from Cambodia yesterday to the former Yugoslavia today. With a trenchant text by Israeli film-maker and critic Haim Bresheeth and the distinguished writer and broadcaster Stuart Hood, this book provides a clear and forthright guide to the horrifying relevance of the Holocaust for readers today. It is powerfully illustrated by Litza Jansz.

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About the Author:

Haim Bresheeth is an Israeli filmmaker, photographer and a film studies scholar. Stuart Hood was a Scottish novelist, translator and a former British television producer and Controller of BBC Television. Litza Jansz has also illustrated Introducing Semiotics: A Graphic Guide.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 9 Up-This strange and contradictory book is not an introduction to the Holocaust; it is a statement of the authors' revisionist political beliefs about that dark period of history. Written and illustrated in a graphic-comic format, it promulgates the view that the Nazis did not intend "to destroy European Jewry physically" but rather, that "many forces within the German state as well as outside it helped to bring it [the Holocaust] about." The authors do not deny that the Holocaust occurred, but assert that the Nazi policy of genocide evolved only after Hitler was unable to expel all the Jews. They indict Western nations for refusing to accept Jewish refugees and argue that Zionists worked to impede immigration to all countries other than British-controlled Palestine. They also postulate that middle-and upper-class European Jewish communities colluded with the Nazis instead of resisting them. The "Aftermath" presents the revisionist stance that Israel today has become the executioner instead of the victim, the colonial oppressor rather than the oppressed. In addition to the bizarre and unproven propaganda permeating the text, the authors' account negates one of their primary assumptions; they demonstrate repeatedly that the killing fields and concentration camps were the results of Nazi policy initiated by Hitler and his henchmen. There is no reason why libraries serving young people should consider this highly politicized, inconsistently argued, and misleading title. Steer them instead to Milton Meltzer's Never to Forget (HarperCollins, 1976), Barbara Rogasky's Smoke and Ashes (Holiday, 1988), or Art Spiegelman's "Maus" books (Pantheon).
Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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