Auschwitz
Laurence Rees
THE SUNDAY TIMES AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
'Superb' ANDREW ROBERTS
In this classic 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 about their actions. Drawing on Rees's landmark documentary and material from the Russian archives, which challenged many previously accepted arguments, this book reveals significant and disturbing facts - from the operation of a brothel to the corruption that was rife throughout the camp.
This is the story of murder, brutality, courage, escape and survival, and a powerful account of how human tragedy of such immense scale could have happened.
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About Laurence Rees
Reviews for Auschwitz
Evening Standard
Excellent
The Independent
A key to understanding man's inhumanity to man
The Guardian
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
Daily Telegraph
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
Washington Post, USA
This magnificent book is exciting and disturbing at the same time
El Mundo, Spain
Scrupulous and honest, this book is utterly without illusions. Rees, a distinguished journalist and historian at the BBC, layers these details with little fanfare but great craftsmanship. Reading this book is an ordeal - not through any failure of the author's but because of his success. Rees's research is impeccable and intrepid. Rees also makes good use of the records that became available only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites. spare, heartbreaking prose.
Washington Post
I believe that Rees's book will be included in the canon of fundamental works shaping our knowledge about the Holocaust.