It seems to me that it is indispensable for every Jew, in fact for every civilized person, to read The Terrible Secret, by Walter Laqueur.
Let me be clear: it’s not summer reading, and constitutes a duty rather than a pleasure. It does not at all mitigate the immeasurable sin of Nazism, but demonstrates how almost every country in Europe bears a quotient of responsibility for the slaughter of the Jews, ranging from open complicity, as in the case of Fascist Italy, to encouragement and to help denied.
The book completes and summarizes the various other books already published that contain partial treatments of this theme.
As an alternative I would propose People in Auschwitz, by Hermann Langbein, which is perhaps the most detailed book so far on the most well-known and notorious of the extermination camps.
The work is remarkable because it pays attention not only to the condition of the prisoners but also to “those on the other side”: men, too, like us, but corrupted and overwhelmed by the fiendish power of the Nazi state.
Shalom, no. 6, June 1984