When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. It set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law and the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg Trials. Part historical detective story, part family history, part legal thriller, Philippe Sands guides us between past and present as several interconnected stories unfold in parallel. The first is the hidden story of two Nuremberg prosecutors who discover, only at the end of the trials, that the man they are prosecuting may be responsible for the murder of their entire families in Nazi-occupied Poland, in and around Lviv. The two prosecutors, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, were remarkable men, whose efforts led to the inclusion of the terms 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide' in the judgement at Nuremberg. The defendant, Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer and Governor-General of Nazi-occupied Poland, turns out to be an equally compelling character. The lives of these three men lead Sands to a more personal story, as he traces the events that overwhelmed his mother's family in Lviv and Vienna during the Second World War. At the heart of this book is an equally personal quest to understand the roots of international law and the concepts that have dominated Sands' work as a lawyer. Eventually, he finds unexpected answers to his questions about his family, in this powerful meditation on the way memory, crime and guilt leave scars across generations, and the haunting gaps left by the secrets of others.

This volume offers the first, in-depth comparison of the Holocaust and new world slavery. Providing a reliable view of the relevant issues, and based on a broad and comprehensive set of data and evidence, Steven Katz analyzes the fundamental differences between the two systems and re-evaluates our understanding of the Nazi agenda. Among the subjects he examines are: the use of black slaves as workers compared to the Nazi use of Jewish labor; the causes of slave demographic decline and growth in different New World locations; the main features of Jewish life during the Holocaust relative to slave life with regard to such topics as diet, physical punishment, medical care, and the role of religion; the treatment of slave women and children as compared to the treatment of Jewish women and children in the Holocaust. Katz shows that slave women were valued as workers, as reproducers of future slaves, and as sexual objects, and that slave children were valued as commodities. For these reasons, neither slave women nor children were intentionally murdered. By comparison, Jewish slave women and children were viewed as the ultimate racial enemy and therefore had to be exterminated. These and other findings conclusively demonstrate the uniqueness of the Holocaust compared with other historical instances of slavery

A history of the T4 program, or "euthanasia program", in Nazi Germany - that is, the murder of handicapped persons by the Nazis. This program was preceded by the politicization of science, which incorporated popular prejudices into "scientific" theories and declared some individuals and even "racial" groups, like Jews and Gypsies, to be "valueless"; by the eugenic movement; and by the misuse of scientific hypotheses by politicians. The policy of exclusion of the "racially inferior" stood at the center of the Nazi utopia. The "euthanasia program", implemented in 1939-40, paved the way for the mass extermination of Jews and Gypsies in 1942-44. Many of those involved in the T4 program (e.g. Franz Stangl) were later involved in the operation of the death camps. Special attention is devoted to the murder of handicapped Jews. These, progressively excluded from the public welfare system and from the medical institutions, were concentrated in 1939-40 in special Jewish hospitals and later killed in the course of the "euthanasia program".

Although there is an immense amount of literature on the 'Final Solution' - the Nazis' attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe during the Second World War - many critical questions still remain unresolved. The authoritative essays in The Final Solution set out to clarify the origins of the attempted genocide of the Jews, and to provide new answers to this period of history which often seems inexplicable." "The book draws on important new evidence, much of it from archives in Eastern Europe which have only recently become accessible. Contributors are among the leading experts in the field. The essays focus on the preconditions and antecedents for the 'Final Solution' and the immediate origins of the decision to murder Europe's Jewish population. They consider, too, the impact of the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 on the evolution of a genocidal policy and the response of the peoples and governments in Germany, occupied Europe, the Free World and the Jewish communities under the Nazis and in the West." "The results of this study are often controversial. The essays challenge many accepted notions about the behaviour of the German Army, how much the Germans knew, and the response of the non-Jewish population in Occupied Europe and the West." "The Final Solution will be of great interest to students of modern European history. It will also make invaluable reading for anyone seeking to understand further this most tragic chapter of recent history.

Contents: Women and Genocide: Notes on an Unwritten History; The Price of Heroism: Veterans of the Dutch Resistance to the Nazi Occupation and the Holocaust in World War II; The Herut Movement and the Kasztner Trial; Syndrome and Shoah: Waslker Percy's Parable of the Holocaust; Armin T. Wegner's Letter to German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Berlin, Easter Monday, April 11, 1933; Comments on Robert Melson's "Revolution and Genocide".

Hidden behind a screen of euphemisms and evasions, of political expediency and psychological denial, the most terrible crime in human history was committed. Despite the shock and outrage that swept the world when the Nazi death camps were first liberated in 1945, the truth about the extermination of European Jewry had been an open secret since at least 1941. Using sources and documents only recently made available, Walter Lacquer examines when and how information about the genocide became known to millions of Germans, international Jewish organizations, leaders of Jewish communities throughout Europe, and top government officials in neutral and Allied countries. Laying bare the lethal combination of disbelief and indifference that met this news, "The Terrible Secret" offers a brilliant and chilling demonstration of paralysis in the face of ultimate evil.

The destruction of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16 was the greatest atrocity of World War I. Around one million Armenians were killed, and the survivors were scattered across the world. Although it is now a century old, the issue of what most of the world calls the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is still a live and divisive issue that mobilizes Armenians across the world, shapes the identity and politics of modern Turkey, and has consumed the attention of U.S. politicians for years. In Great Catastrophe, the eminent scholar and reporter Thomas de Waal looks at the aftermath and politics of the Armenian Genocide and tells the story of recent efforts by courageous Armenians, Kurds, and Turks to come to terms with the disaster as Turkey enters a new post-Kemalist era. The story of what happened to the Armenians in 1915-16 is well-known. Here we are told the "history of the history" and the lesser-known story of what happened to Armenians, Kurds, and Turks in the century that followed. De Waal relates how different generations tackled the issue of the "Great Catastrophe" from the 1920s until the failure of the Protocols signed by independent Armenia and Turkey in 2010. Quarrels between diaspora Armenians supporting and opposing the Soviet Union broke into violence and culminated with the murder of an archbishop in 1933. The devising of the word "genocide," the growth of modern identity politics, and the 50th anniversary of the massacres re-energized a new generation of Armenians. In Turkey the issue was initially forgotten, only to return to the political agenda in the context of the Cold War and an outbreak of Armenian terrorism. More recently, Turkey has started to confront its taboos. In an astonishing revival of oral history, the descendants of tens of thousands of "Islamized Armenians," who have been in the shadows since 1915, have begun to reemerge and reclaim their identities. Drawing on archival sources, reportage and moving personal stories, de Waal tells the full story of Armenian-Turkish relations since the Genocide in all its extraordinary twists and turns. He looks behind the propaganda to examine the realities of a terrible historical crime and the divisive "politics of genocide" it produced. The book throws light not only on our understanding of Armenian-Turkish relations but also of how mass atrocities and historical tragedies shape contemporary politics.

Reflects on the interrelationship between war, genocide, and identity in the 20th century. Contends that World War I provided a pattern for the industrial killing that reached its apex in the Nazi Holocaust. Comparing France and Germany, both of which looked for an "elusive enemy" to help them cope with the trauma of World War I, notes that Germany found it in the Jews. This perception allowed the Germans to see themselves as victims and their actions against the Jews as self-defense. The search for "elusive enemies" (to blame for perpetrating the genocide) and "elusive victims" (e.g. the French or German people) continued after the war. Compares the French, German, and Jewish postwar discourses of the Holocaust. Presenting themselves as the main victims of Nazism, the French and Germans have tended to neglect Jews as the main victims. Criticizes writings by Hannah Arendt, Ka-Tzetnik, and some other postwar writers on the Holocaust and its roots.

Genocide: The Basics is an engaging introduction to the study of a controversial and widely debated topic. This concise and comprehensive book explores key questions such as; how successful have efforts been in the prevention of genocide? How prevalent has genocide been throughout history? and how has the concept been defined? Real world case studies address significant issues including: The killing of indigenous peoples by colonial powers The Holocaust and the question of "uniqueness" Peacekeeping efforts in the 1990s Legal attempts to create a genocide-free world With suggestions for further reading, discussion questions at the end of each chapter and a glossary of key terms, Genocide: The Basics is the ideal starting point for students approaching the topic for the first time.

Product Description Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation examines the emergence, implementation, and representation of industrial killing, an inherent and crucial component of modernity whose most extreme manifestation was the Holocaust.The mechanized, impersonal, and sustained mass destruction of human beings, organized and legitimized by states, scientists, jurists, and intellectuals, is rooted in the industrial slaughterhouse of the Great War. In Murder in Our Midst, Omer Bartov argues that the Nazi death factories are best understood in the context of modern warfare, beginning with the First World War. He shows how the way we understand ourselves reflects the ambivalent effects of the Holocaust on our perceptions of war and violence, history and memory, progress and barbarism.Analyzing a wide array of historical texts, works of fiction, films, and museums, Bartov leads the reader from ancient myths of heroism to the trenches of the Western Front, from Thomas Mann's romantic vision of war to Primo Levi's stark depictions of genocide, from colonial war museums to the visual art of the Holocaust. These representations of killing share some of the same important features. They attempt to form coherent images from horrific events, to draw didactic lessons from them, and to use them for political ends. About the Author Omer Bartov is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University.

Providing an annotated commentary on two unpublished manuscripts written by international law and genocide scholar Raphael Lemkin, Steven L. Jacobs offers a critical introduction to the father of genocide studies. Lemkin coined the term "genocide" and was the motivating force behind the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide. The materials collected here give readers further insight into this singularly courageous man and the issue which consumed him in the aftermath of the Second World War. It is a welcome addition to the library of genocide and Holocaust Studies scholars and students alike.