Book, Nazi Germany and the Jews 2 years of extermination 1939-45[LS]

The Holocaust, despite its bibliography multiplying in recent years, is a topic whose horror and whose lesson the passage of time does not erase to the extent that one wants to distinguish the bestial in human actions. It is for this reason that The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945, the second volume of Nazi Germany and the Jews, acquires a special significance. In it, Saul Friedländer concludes, with the same chronological and non-topical approach as the first volume, The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, his vast historical panel on the role of the common man and what he calls 'redemptive anti-Semitism' in the events that culminated in genocide. It demonstrates how the Nazi actions and ideology, the passivity or silent acceptance of the German people and the populations of the occupied countries had as a fundamental ally the omission or even the connivance of their elites (political and judicial authorities, police forces, social and spiritual leaders) and how the implementation of the extermination policy also counted, to some extent, on a certain inaction on the part of the victims, who sought, in a tragic and desperate attempt at self-salvation, just to survive long enough to escape the fate dictated by Berlin. In addition to exposing the bureaucratic innards of the Third Reich, the historian brings to light the cultural and ideological aspects of the extermination promoted by the Nazis, to place it in the broader context of European politics and racial hatred, historically and religiously inflamed, also revealing what was contingent on the primacy of death over life, now restricted to the mere 'needs of the body'. What distinguishes this masterful and multifaceted work, and makes it a classic, is the author's refusal to accept easy, domesticated answers, preferring instead to convey the perception of the magnitude, complexity and interrelationship of the many aspects of these events that intertwined and converged. to weave the veil of darkness that covered Europe and its supposedly civilized consciousness, a quality that explains why this exquisite work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.LHS and JGNote: By mistake, in chapter 'Five: September 1941 to December 1941 ', the name of Josane Barbosa, who co-translated this excerpt, did not appear.