Nazi Germany and the Jews

In the first volume of his landmark two-part history of the Nazi Party’s attempted eradication of the Jews of Europe, historian and Holocaust survivor Saul Friedländer explores a question that has haunted us for more than 50 years: How did one of the most industrially and culturally advanced nations in the world embark on such a heinous criminal enterprise?

Friedländer draws on long-lost archives to restore the voices of Jews who, after the 1933 Nazi accession to power, were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality. Students will also hear from members of the Nazi party, leaders of the Protestant and Catholic churches, scholars and prominent members of the business community. Perhaps the most disturbing testimony of all comes from ordinary German citizens, who for the most part did not speak out against acts of segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence that took place all around them.

Born in Prague, Saul Friedländer spent his boyhood in Nazi-occupied France. He is a professor of history at UCLA, and has written numerous books on Nazi Germany and World War II. In 2008, Friedlander won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for the second volume of his influential work The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.

“This is a brilliant book, combining scholarly rigor with a compassionate treatment of the human dimension of momentous historic decisions.” — Boston Globe