NEW hardcover

Auschwitz: A New History Rees, Laurence

AuschwitzBirkenau is the site of the largest mass murder in human history Yet its story is not fully known In Auschwitz, Laurence Rees reveals new insights from more than 100 original interviews with Auschwitz survivors and Nazi perpetrators who speak on the record for the first time Their testimonies provide a portrait of the inner workings of the camp in unrivalled detailfrom the techniques of mass murder, to the politics and gossip mill that turned between guards and prisoners, to the oncamp brothel in which the lines between those guards and prisoners became surprisingly blurredRees examines the strategic decisions that led the Nazi leadership to prescribe Auschwitz as its primary site for the extinction of Europes Jewstheir Final Solution He concludes that many of the horrors that were perpetrated in Auschwitz were driven not just by ideological inevitability but as a practical response to a war in the East that had begun to go wrong for Germany A terrible immoral pragmatism characterizes many of the decisions that determined what happened at Auschwitz Thus the story of the camp becomes a morality tale, too, in which evil is shown to proceed in a series of deft, almost noiseless incremental steps until it produces the overwhelming horror of the industrial scale slaughter that was inflicted in the gas chambers of Auschwitz