This book seeks to liberate the history of the Holocaust from the clichés that have been presented in mainstream literature and media. Its author, Dan Stone, is the director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, the University of London. Intended for the lay historian, The Holocaust challenges reductionist thinking by demanding that a reader see the destruction of European Jewry as a “series of interlocking local genocides carried out under the auspices of a grand project” as opposed to an “industrial genocide” led by Hitler and the Nazi party.
Stone’s book is written in eight chapters. In the first, titled “Before the Holocaust,” the author guides the reader through the pseudoscientific race theory and antisemitic ideology that prevailed throughout Europe and fueled the rise of the Nazi party. These ideologies found public expression and legitimacy in the aftermath of World War I in Germany and around the world. In chapter eight, “Holocaust Memory,” Stone considers how Holocaust consciousness after the war developed in stages, marked by events such as the trial of Adolph Eichmann and the publication of Anne Frank’s Diary. He also challenges the reader to consider the Holocaust as the ideological precursor to disturbing world events of the present, such as the emboldened acts of the radical Right in Europe and the riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Chapters two through four recount Holocaust history from the legal restrictions imposed on the Jews of Germany before the war to the adoption of the Final Solution in 1942. Chapter five focuses on the collaboration of other nations in Germany’s genocide and presents the Holocaust as a “continent-wide crime.” Chapter six offers a deep dive into the concentration camps, death camps, and other means used to annihilate the Jews. In chapter seven, Stone writes of the death marches, the liberation of Holocaust survivors, and the fate of Jews seeking to return to their homes or forced into Displaced Person camps. At the chapter’s conclusion, Stone emphasizes that the interest in “survivor testimony in recent years — and the worry on the part of many about how the Holocaust will be remembered once the last survivors are dead — has obscured the fact that survival was the exception — death the norm.”
The Holocaust is a challenging but compelling read. Stone’s use of personal narratives rather than impersonal primary sources brings the destruction of European Jewry into sharp focus. His writing unearths a disturbing paradox: an “increased awareness of the Holocaust has led it to be banalized and exploited.” Stone’s intimate retelling seeks to reverse that trend.
At the same time, the author recognizes that such a retelling will never be complete. Its events are too complex and interwoven to be adequately unraveled and presented in any systematic way. The Holocaust, in other words, is a perpetually incomplete history. Nevertheless, Stone’s book offers new insights about the Holocaust and its impact on the Jewish and non-Jewish community, both then and now.
Jonathan Fass is the Managing Director of Educational Technology and Strategy at The Jewish Education Project of New York.
