Auschwitz, 1270 to the present / Debórah Dwork & Robert Jan van Pelt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dwork, Deborah.

Contributor:

Pelt, R. J. van (Robert Jan), 1955-

Mazal Holocaust Collection

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Auschwitz (Concentration camp).

Oświęcim (Poland)--History.

Oświęcim (Poland).

Poland--Oświęcim.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

443 pages, 20 pages of plates : illustrations, maps, plans ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Norton, [1996]

Language Note:

English.

Summary:

Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present elucidates how the prewar ordinary town of Auschwitz became Germany's most lethal killing site step by step and in stages: a transformation wrought by human beings, mostly German and mostly male. Who were the men who conceived, created, and constructed the killing facility? What were they thinking as they inched their way to iniquity? Using the hundreds of architectural plans for the camp that the Germans, in their haste, forgot to destroy, as well as blueprints and papers in municipal, provincial, and federal archives, Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt show that the town of Auschwitz and the camp of that name were the centerpiece of Himmler's ambitious project to recover the German legacy of the Teutonic Knights and Frederick the Great in Nazi-ruled Poland. Analyzing the close ties between the 700-year history of the town and the five-year evolution of the concentration camp in its suburbs, Dwork and van Pelt offer an absolutely new and compelling interpretation of the origins and development of the death camp at Auschwitz. And drawing on oral histories of survivors, memoirs, depositions, and diaries, the authors explore the ever more murderous impact of these changes on the inmates' daily lives.

Contents:

Part 1. Nostalgia and fulfillment : 1. An ordinary town

2. The Prussian connection

3. Germany's turn to the East

4. The Third Reich

5. A paradise of blood and soil.

Part 2. Ambition and perdition : 7. A concentration camp

7. IG Farben

8. Birkenau

9. Summer 1941

10. The Holocaust

Epilogue: Owning and disowning Auschwitz.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 383-423) and index.

National Jewish Book Awards - Holocaust, Winner, 1996

ISBN:

0393039331

9780393039337

9780393322910

0393322912

OCLC:

33079080