The Last Days : Steven Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
- Book Review,
by Steven Spielberg (Foreword), David Cesarani (Introduction)
From School Library Journal
YA-Based on the narratives of Holocaust survivors interviewed in Spielberg's film by the same name, this volume chronicles the Nazi's efforts to exterminate Hungarian Jews in the last few months of World War II. Readers witness this effort through the powerful accounts of six concentration-camp survivors and three American liberators. Each story concludes with the narrator's return 50 years later to the camp and, in some cases to the hometown that held his/her memories. The book is illustrated with archival photographs and contemporary color photos that document the individuals' return to the sites where these horrors took place. An introduction by Holocaust historian David Cesarani provides an excellent historical framework. An impressive combination of recognized scholarship and haunting oral history.Becky Ferrall, Stonewall Jackson High School, Manassas, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"The Holocaust must be taught as the possible culmination of the horror that can occur when man loses moral integrity and belief in the sanctity of the human life. The Last Days is a potent and convincing contribution to this learning process." --Randolph L. Braham
Review
"The Holocaust must be taught as the possible culmination of the horror that can occur when man loses moral integrity and belief in the sanctity of the human life. The Last Days is a potent and convincing contribution to this learning process." --Randolph L. Braham
Book Description
The devastation of Hungarian Jewry was among the worst atrocities of World War II, encompassing the murder of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in the final months of the war.
Facing defeat, Hitler and his allies brought the Holocaust to Hungary with unprecedented speed and barbarity. The Hungarian Jewish population was rounded up and deported to concentration camps in just 54 days. 437,402 Jews. 148 trains. Destination: Auschwitz.
The German plan for annihilation of the Jews-called the 'Final Solution'-set the goal that not a single survivor would be left to bear witness to the events. Fifty years later, Steven Spielberg established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to record the testimony of as many survivors as possible. From the ashes of the Holocaust these voices now emerge to share their stories and to represent the nearly six million Jews who did not survive.
Survivors and liberators share what they experienced in gripping, firsthand testimony. Archival photographs document history, and powerful color images chronicle the survivors' emotional return to the places of their pasts:from homes unseen for fifty years to the ghettos and concentration camps of their imprisonment. Top scholars have been brought together to share their insights into one of humanity's darkest chapters. These elements are poignantly synthesized in The Last Days as a warning for all mankind.
From the Publisher
"The Holocaust must be taught as the possible culmination of the horror that can occur when man loses moral integrity and belief in the sanctity of the human life. The Last Days is a potent and convincing contribution to this learning process." --Randolph L. Braham
About the Author
David Cesarani is Professor of Twentieth-century Jewish History and Culture, University of Southhampton, and Director of the Wiener Library, London. He has just published a biography of Arthur Koestler.
Dr. Randolph Braham is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Sciences at the City College and the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of new York. He is the author of many scholarly monographs, including the highly acclaimed The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary.
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