In this compelling book, highly acclaimed author and broadcaster Laurence Rees tells the definitive history of the most notorious Nazi institution of them all. We discover how Auschwitz evolved from a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners into the site of the largest mass murder in history - part death camp, part concentration camp, where around a million Jews were killed.
Auschwitz examines the mentality and motivations of the key Nazi decision makers, and perpetrators of appalling crimes speak here for the first time abouty their actions. Fascinating and disturbing facts have been uncovered - from the operation of a brothel to the corruption that was rife throughout the camp. The book draws on intriguing new documentary material from recently opened Russian archives, which will challenge many previously accepted arguments.
This is the story of murder, brutality, courage, excape and survival, and apowerful account of how human tragedy of such immense scale could have happened.
Author Biography
Laurence Rees is Creative Director of History Programmes for BBC Television and a former editor of the Emmy–winning
Timewatch, BBC TV’s history documentary series.
He has written five previous books, including
The Nazis: a Warning from History,
War of the Century about the Hitler/Stalin war and
Horror in the East, an examination of the war against Japan.
The Nazis,
War of the Century and
Horror in the East were also successful television documentary series – all written and produced by Laurence Rees. This body of work has won him a host of awards, including an International Documentary Association Award and a British Academy Award.
Reviews
Thank God that occasionally books of the stature of Laurence Rees's superb
Auschwitz: The Nazis and the "Final Solution" are published... Fascinating,Excellent,Scholarly yet accessible and objective, the author rightly feeling that the facts speak for themselves.,Devastating. Rees's research is impeccable and intrepid. Ultimately he does at the gut level what Hannah Arendt achieved some 40 years ago at the level of philosophy: he forces the reader to shift the Holocaust out of the realm of nightmare or Gothic horror and acknowledge it as something all too human. Scrupulous and honest, this book is utterly without illusions.,Well-written with striking testimonies from bystanders, perpetrators and victims. The interviews with SS men, and sundry European Fascists, are genuinely revealing, and must have been exceptionally difficult to negotiate.,A key to understanding man's inhumanity to man,This magnificent book is exciting and disturbing at the same time
