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Why?: Explaining the Holocaust
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Published:
W. W. Norton & Company 2017
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Description

Featured in the PBS documentary, "The US and the Holocaust" by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein



"Superbly written and researched, synthesizing the classics while digging deep into a vast repository of primary sources." —Josef Joffe, Wall Street Journal


Why? explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the most commonly asked questions about the Holocaust: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why murder? Why this swift and sweeping? Why didn't more Jews fight back more often? Why did survival rates diverge? Why such limited help from outside? What legacies, what lessons?


An internationally acclaimed scholar, Peter Hayes brings a wealth of research and experience to bear on conventional views of the Holocaust, dispelling many misconceptions and challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations.

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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
01/17/2017
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780393254372
ASIN:
B01HDSU0H4
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Peter Hayes. (2017). Why?: Explaining the Holocaust. W. W. Norton & Company.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Peter Hayes. 2017. Why?: Explaining the Holocaust. W. W. Norton & Company.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Peter Hayes, Why?: Explaining the Holocaust. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Peter Hayes. Why?: Explaining the Holocaust. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Date Updated:
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fullDescription

Featured in the PBS documentary, "The US and the Holocaust" by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein

"Superbly written and researched, synthesizing the classics while digging deep into a vast repository of primary sources." —Josef Joffe, Wall Street Journal

Why? explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the most commonly asked questions about the Holocaust: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why murder? Why this swift and sweeping? Why didn't more Jews fight back more often? Why did survival rates diverge? Why such limited help from outside? What legacies, what lessons?

An internationally acclaimed scholar, Peter Hayes brings a wealth of research and experience to bear on conventional views of the Holocaust, dispelling many misconceptions and challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations.

reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Michael N. Dobkowski;Jewish Book Council
      • content: Clearly written, cogently argued ... courageously confronts some of the thorniest issues raised by the Shoah, making Why? Explaining the Holocaust an indispensable work for specialists and informed readers alike.
      • premium: False
      • source: Robert Eaglestone;Times Higher Education
      • content: [Hayes] show[s] a sophisticated and judicious mastery of the most up-to-date historical scholarship... This timely, level-headed book is a model of public engagement.
      • premium: False
      • source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
      • content: Hayes has written a valuable book for today's challenges, with perspective and sensitivity, that is, indeed, authoritative, readable and revealing.
      • premium: False
      • source: David Engel, professor of Holocaust studies and chair of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University;Jewish Telegraphic Agency
      • content: I recommend this book for a lucid, well-crafted introduction to the history of the Holocaust. Unlike most works on the history of the Holocaust... Hayes' book concentrates... on helping readers to understand why the Holocaust occurred when it did, in the manner it did and with the results it produced. It offers readers a window onto how historians go about finding answers to these questions.
      • premium: False
      • source: David I. Kertzer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Pope and Mussolini
      • content: A fascinating, remarkably lucid, compulsively readable explanation of how the mass murder of Europe's Jews came about and how it transpired in the middle of the twentieth century.
      • premium: False
      • source: Michael R. Marrus, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto and author of Lessons of the Holocaust
      • content: Calmly argued, alert to the most recent scholarship about the Holocaust, and full of good sense, Peter Hayes's new book carries an essential title asked universally: Why? Why did such a thing happen? Taking up this most difficult of challenges, his pages answer questions that many analysts dare not even ask, let alone answer. That is why this work should be required reading, both for specialists and for those who seek more recently to understand.
      • premium: False
      • source: Dagmar Herzog, distinguished professor of history and the Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York
      • content: This book is outstanding—beautifully written, with enviable clarity of argument, countless instructive details, and memorable, evocative images. On every issue around which there has been either controversy or confusion—from the interrelationships between the Holocaust and the mass murder of individuals with disabilities to the motivations of the perpetrators, the economics of the killing operations, the special situation of Poland, the experiences of slave laborers, or the dimensions of Jewish resistance—Peter Hayes helpfully distills the debates and provides judicious, orienting assessments. A masterful, indispensable, landmark work.
      • premium: False
      • source: Lawrence L. Langer, author of Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory and Using and Abusing the Holocaust
      • content: An original, informative, and essential addition to the field of Holocaust studies. It should be required reading for every introductory course on the Holocaust.
      • premium: False
      • source: Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
      • content: Peter Hayes poses eight key questions about the Holocaust and then analyzes and answers them with enviable mastery, succinctness, and clarity. Hayes's arguments are presented with a scholarly authority that is judicious, compelling, and accessible. A gem of a book.
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        October 10, 2016
        Hayes (How Was It Possible?), professor emeritus of Holocaust studies at Northwestern University, answers eight questions relating to the Shoah in order to show that it is “no less historically explicable than any other human experience.” Particular themes frame the chapters, which have subtitles such as “Why the Germans?,” “Why Didn’t More Jews Fight Back More Often?,” and “Why Such Limited Help from Outside?” An economic historian by training, Hayes delves into the day-to-day functioning of the Nazi slave-labor system. He also examines the fraught nature of the relationship between Polish Jews and gentiles during the Holocaust. His analysis of Jewish leaders’ diverse survival strategies shows that none had much effect against the relentless Nazi murder machinery. In Minsk, for example, the two heads of the ghetto actively supported armed resistance, yet “that availed them little as the ghetto’s population dropped from 100,000, in October 1941, to 12,000, in August 1942.” In his concluding chapter on legacies and lessons, Hayes sturdily debunks a number of Holocaust myths. But it’s also the book’s weakest section; his lessons there focus on prevention of the Holocaust’s recurrence and are stated vaguely: e.g. “Be self-reliant but not isolationist.” Hayes reveals the virtues of dealing with this overwhelming subject in a topical rather than a chronological way.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        Starred review from December 1, 2016
        How could a civilized nation have brought a self-professed racist and xenophobe to power and then stood by as millions were murdered? It's not a mystery, according to this important overview of the Shoah.It does not do, Hayes (Emeritus, Holocaust Studies/Northwestern Univ.; From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich, 2007, etc.) notes at the outset, to confront the Holocaust and its legacy of genocide and terror with words like "incomprehensible" and "unfathomable." Such words amount to "an assertion of the speaker's innocence--of his or her incapacity not only to conceive of such horror but to enact anything like it." The German-speaking world was full of such supposed innocents, who protested that they knew nothing of it but enabled and participated in the system all the same. The Holocaust, writes the author, is eminently knowable: "it was the work of humans acting on familiar human weaknesses and motives: wounded pride, fear, self-righteousness, prejudice, and personal ambition being among the most obvious." Proceeding from the provocative question, "why another book on the Holocaust?"--the entire book is a careful answer to it--Hayes examines precipitating events and conditions, such as a long European tradition of scapegoating and anti-Semitism given new weight by the horrors of World War I. He looks into the participation of sectors of society that normally are not singled out in such accounts, such as the collusion of the German pharmaceutical industry in developing the mechanisms for mass death, and he delves into some particularly thorny questions--e.g., the old saw, "Why didn't more Jews fight back more often?" One answer: a civilized person is (too?) often inclined to follow orders, even at the risk of their own ruin, "in hopes of preventing them from getting worse." Throughout, Hayes writes lucidly and with generous spirit. "Beware the beginnings," admonishes a German proverb. This noteworthy book is a chilling compendium of warning signs, past and present.

        COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        November 1, 2016

        Few other historical events are as frequently analyzed as the Holocaust, yet too often these investigations present information that is not unique. Hayes (history, German, Northwestern Univ.) offers a refreshing examination of this World War II atrocity and why it was allowed to happen. As the chair of the academic committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hayes expertly answers commonly fielded but complex questions in chapter topics such as "Why the Jews?," which details the events leading up to Hitler's rise in power; "Why Murder?," which explains the factors that led up to mass extermination, and "Why Such Limited Help from Outside?," a thorough examination of the influences that spurred complicity among outside countries. Throughout, Hayes dispels prevailing myths that negatively impact Holocaust scholarship, such as the misconception that anti-Semitism brought Hitler to power. The work concludes with legacies and lessons of the Holocaust while emphasizing the importance of abolishing indifference. VERDICT In a narrative brimming with historical sources, Hayes's work is required reading for history scholars, amateur history buffs, and anyone interested in answering necessary questions surrounding this tragedy.--Marian Mays, Washington Talking Book & Braille Lib., Seattle

        Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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Featured in the PBS documentary, "The US and the Holocaust" by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein

"Superbly written and researched, synthesizing the classics while digging deep into a vast repository of primary sources." —Josef Joffe, Wall Street Journal

Why? explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the most commonly asked questions about the Holocaust: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why murder? Why this swift and sweeping? Why didn't more Jews fight back more often? Why did survival rates diverge? Why such limited help from outside? What legacies, what lessons?

An internationally acclaimed scholar, Peter Hayes brings a wealth of research and experience to bear on conventional views of the Holocaust, dispelling many misconceptions and challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations.

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