{"id":708,"date":"2013-02-08T10:21:36","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T10:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/?p=361"},"modified":"2024-11-05T12:09:10","modified_gmt":"2024-11-05T12:09:10","slug":"reviews-in-the-press-the-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/2013\/02\/08\/reviews-in-the-press-the-holocaust\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Wynn – Reviews in the Press: The Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fox-newspaper\"<\/a>Readers of earlier posts on the blog<\/a> (and some of my students!) will know that I urge people to read the \u201cquality\u201d press in order to follow the news and also to get book (and other) reviews.\u00a0 Two reviews in Saturday\u2019s Guardian<\/i> caught my attention this weekend \u2013 and then a piece in the in the Sunday Times<\/i>.\u00a0 All of this took on a particular significance as Sunday was Holocaust Remembrance Day.<\/p>\n

The first review, a full-page piece by the Helen Fawcett Professor of History at UC Berkeley, Thomas W. Laqueur, is of Otto Dov Kulka\u2019s Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death: Reflections on Memory and Imagination<\/i><\/a>. Kulka was a survivor of Auschwitz and his book combines scholarly analysis of the Holocaust with a particular emphasis on Theresienstadt and the attempt by the Nazis to present a humane image of the camps to the International Red Cross with personal memories and reflections \u2013 and his own chance survival. Once teh Red Cross had been, the inhabitants of the family camp were murdered. \u00a0Laqueur calls the book \u201cthe product of a master historian\u201d, a reminder of the necessity as Primo Levi said to bear witness to the horrific events of the Nazi years.<\/p>\n

On the facing page there is Ian Thomson\u2019s review of S\u00f6nke Neitzel and Harald Wetzer\u2019s Soldaten: On fighting, Killing and Dying<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0 This book is based on secret recordings of SS and Wermacht prisoners-of-war in a camp in Trent Park, Cockfosters.\u00a0 The recordings are clearly horrific in what they reveal about the complicity of ordinary German soldiers in the Holocaust \u2013 perhaps like Hitler\u2019s Willing Executioners<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0 Prisoners spoke of killing Jews as \u201cfun\u201d, and one officer recalled the after-dinner execution of Polish Jews that took the form of a pheasant shoot. Like Kulka\u2019s book, this one too offers \u201can essential documentary record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having read these reviews and been reminded of the horror of the Holocaust, I was sad \u2013 and disturbed \u2013 to see the Sunday Times Magazine<\/i> give space to an \u201cexpos\u00e9\u201d of the Holocaust denier David Irving.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think we need reminding of the perverse position this so-called historian takes and I would much rather he not be given publicity.\u00a0 Hopefully, the readers of the article will recognize that Irving\u2019s position as a serious historian has been discredited \u2013 if they are in any doubt, they might read both books mentioned in the reviews above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Readers of earlier posts on the blog (and some of my students!) will know that I urge people to read the \u201cquality\u201d press in order to follow the news and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[368,768,772],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-media-2","tag-modern","tag-neil-wynn"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3459,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/3459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}