Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and WarningA brilliant, haunting, and profoundly original portrait of the defining tragedy of our time. In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying. The Holocaust began in a dark but accessible place, in Hitler's mind, with the thought that the elimination of Jews would restore balance to the planet and allow Germans to win the resources they desperately needed. Such a worldview could be realized only if Germany destroyed other states, so Hitler's aim was a colonial war in Europe itself. In the zones of statelessness, almost all Jews died. A few people, the righteous few, aided them, without support from institutions. Much of the new research in this book is devoted to understanding these extraordinary individuals. The almost insurmountable difficulties they faced only confirm the dangers of state destruction and ecological panic. These men and women should be emulated, but in similar circumstances few of us would do so. By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have misunderstood modernity and endangered the future. The early twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological challenges to global order. Our world is closer to Hitler's than we like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it was -- and ourselves as we are. Groundbreaking, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a Holocaust that is not only history but warning. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - vlodko62 - LibraryThingYet another masterwork from historian Timothy Snyder, this one on perhaps the central evil of the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust. Together with Bloodlands, this tells the story of one of the darkest ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - rivkat - LibraryThingThis is a book about the idea of the Holocaust more than its mechanics, though it emphasizes again and again that those who killed Jews also killed non-Jews and vice versa, and that the killers were ... Read full review
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ally antisemitism Auschwitz Austria began Belarus Belarusian Berlin Betar Białystok British camps citizenship collaboration colonial communist created Czechoslovakia death deported destroyed destruction Drymmer east eastern Europe eastern Poland Einsatzgruppen Estonian ethnic European extermination Final Solution forces foreign policy French German German invasion German occupation German policy global Gulag Heydrich Himmler Hitler Holocaust Home Army human Hungary idea Irgun Jewish Judeobolshevik Karski kill Jews land large numbers Latvia leaders Lithuania lived major mass killing mass murder meant million murder of Jews Nazi Germany neighbors NKVD º º Palestine peasants Piłsudski pogroms Poles policemen Polish citizens Polish Jews Polish military population race racial Red Army regime rescue Jews rescuers revolution Romanian shot Snyder Soviet citizens Soviet partisans Soviet power Soviet rule Soviet Ukraine Soviet Union Stalin stateless struggle survived territory thousand tion took Ukrainian Ukrainian nationalists USSR violence Volhynia Warsaw ghetto Zionist zone
Bibliographic information
| Title | Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning |
| Author | Timothy Snyder |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Tim Duggan Books, 2015 |
| ISBN | 1101903457, 9781101903452 |
| Length | 462 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / Holocaust History / Military / World War II History / Modern / 20th Century |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |