The Anatomy of the Holocaust: Selected Works from a Life of Scholarship

by Raul Hilberg (Editor), Walter H. Pehle (Editor), René Schlott (Editor)

Overview

A multifaceted look at historian Raul Hilberg, tracing the evolution of Holocaust research from a marginal subdiscipline into a vital intellectual project.

“I would recommend this book to both Holocaust historians and general readers alike. The breadth and depth of Hilberg’s research and his particular insights have not yet been surpassed by any other Holocaust scholar.”—Jewish Libraries News&Reviews

Though best known as the author of the landmark 1961 work The Destruction of the European Jews, the historian Raul Hilberg produced a variety of archival research, personal essays, and other works over a career that spanned half a century. The Anatomy of the Holocaust collects some of Hilberg’s most essential and groundbreaking writings―many of them published in obscure journals or otherwise inaccessible to nonspecialists―in a single volume. Supplemented with commentary and notes from Hilberg’s longtime German editor and his biographer.

From the Introduction:
This selection by the editors from the multitude of his published texts focuses on Hilberg’s intellectual interests as a Holocaust researcher. Among other topics, they deal with the bureaucracy of the Holocaust, the number of victims, the role of the Judenräte(Jewish councils), and the function of the railway and the police in the extermination process. The scholarly impulses extending from Hilberg’s work remain remarkable and virulent almost a decade after his death.2 They deserve to be readily accessible in one place to historians and the interested public in the new compilation offered here. Many of the debates influenced by Hilberg are not yet resolved. The texts presented can be quite revealing in light of these controversies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789203561
Publisher:	Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/07/2019
Series:	Vermont Studies on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust , #8
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	258
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Raul Hilberg (1926-2007) was the founding scholar of Holocaust studies in the United States and the author of numerous publications, including the classic The Destruction of the European Jews. He taught political science at the University of Vermont from 1955 to 1991.

Walter H. Pehle (1941-2021) studied in Cologne, Bonn and Düsseldorf, and held a doctorate in history. From 1977 to 2011 he was an editor for history at the German publisher S. Fischer Verlag. From 1988 he  served as the acquisitions editor for S. Fischer Verlag’s series “The Age of National Socialism”, which to date includes over 250 books. His own publications include, as volume editor, the anthology November 1938: From “Reichskristallnacht” to Genocide (Berg, 1991) and, together with Wolfgang Benz, Encyclopedia of German Resistance to the Nazi Movement (Continuum, 1997). He is an honorary professor at the University of Innsbruck.

René Schlott is a historian and researcher at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam and teaches history at the universities of Potsdam and Berlin. He received his doctorate in 2011 from the University of Giessen and currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship focusing on the life, work, and legacy of Raul Hilberg. In 2017, he was awarded a three-year scholarship from the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung for his work on Hilberg.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Walter H. Pehle and René Schlott

Chapter 1. The Anatomy of the Holocaust
Chapter 2. German Motivations for the Destruction of the Jews
Chapter 3. The Bureaucracy of Annihilation
Chapter 4. The Significance of the Holocaust
Chapter 5. Incompleteness in Holocaust Historiography
Chapter 6. Bitburg as Symbol
Chapter 7. The Ghetto as a Form of Government
Chapter 8. The Judenrat: Conscious or Unconscious “Tool”
Chapter 9. I Was Not There
Chapter 10. The Holocaust Mission: July 29 to August 12, 1979
Chapter 11. In Search of the Special Trains
Chapter 12. Working on the Holocaust
Chapter 13. The Development of Holocaust Research: A Personal Overview

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book is written in a concise and factual narrative style, with an absence of any judgement or emotion...I would recommend this book to both Holocaust historians and general readers alike. The breadth and depth of Hilberg's research and his particular insights have not yet been surpassed by any other Holocaust scholar." - Jewish Libraries News & Reviews

"With this compilation of essays and recollections, we [...] once again come to know Hilberg as an immensely productive, curious and innovative historian." - Süddeutsche Zeitung

"A volume of great humanity." - Die Tageszeitung

"[Hilberg was] undoubtedly the most important pioneer in the field of perpetrator research, all of whose topics and controversies he anticipated in their essence." - H-Soz-Kult

From the Publisher