By
– October 24, 2011
Originally published in 1993, The World Must Know is a stunning, skillfully organized and powerfully written account of the Holocaust as told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Drawing on the museum’s extensive collection of artifacts, maps, films, music, archives and personal testimonies and augmented with over 200 period photographs, the book introduces the reader to both the Holocaust and to the museum in a most engaging fashion. The revised edition is enhanced by new information and insights based on archival information made accessible to researchers after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central European Communist regimes and includes new photographs, charts, a new section on the Holocaust in Greece and an updated bibliography. The book does not replicate the experience of the museum. Nothing can do that. It remains a moving, often transforming experience for the millions of people who visit it. But the book stands on its own both as an overview and an in-depth examination of historical events. It attempts to be multidisciplinary by incorporating the insights and approaches of historians, political scientists, philosophers, writers, psychologists and theologians. Some of its most effective narrative sections are punctuated by the personal testimonies of survivors, which are woven into the text so that history, like the exhibits of the museum, is brought to life through the experiences of people who endured this human tragedy. The writing is crisp and compelling, the photographs and charts are striking and illuminating and the book is a wonderful compliment and companion to the museum whose mission, during a time when ethnic violence, anti-Semitism and genocide continue to plague the world, is as relevant as ever.
Michael N. Dobkowski is a professor of religious studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is co-editor of Genocide and the Modern Age and On the Edge of Scarcity (Syracuse University Press); author of The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American Anti-Semitism; and co-author of The Nuclear Predicament.