The world reacts to the Holocaust /

The overall theme of this monumental reference work is the impact of the Holocaust on virtually every country involved in WW II. It treats not only the obvious nations located on the European continent and overrun by the Nazis (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Lithuania, etc.), where the killings occurred, but countries far removed (the US [Wyman's specialty], Canada, Cuba, Japan, and Israel). A separate chapter is concerned with the UN response, including an account of its post hoc approval of an international treaty on genocide. Except for the UN chapter, the other 27 contributions follow a common format: each country report provides an account of the prewar status of antisemitism, a usually briefer description of the Holocaust itself, and only then a section on the postwar impact of the horrors, as each country tried to come to terms with the event from its own particular geographic and political perspective. One could question the placement of some chapters or why Cuba is included but not Belgium or Norway (where high percentages of the Jewish communities were murdered), but this book is likely to become indispensable for all those interested in the postwar consequences of the Holocaust. Some studies describe the impact in a single country, but none combines so many accounts in a single collection. Upper-division undergraduates and higher. L. Weinberg; University of Nevada, Reno