Review by Choice Review
Berenbaum's scholarly work provides an excellent assessment of the Holocaust Museum, which combines literary and visual media to describe the subject. He introduces the reader to Jewish life throughout Europe before the rise of Nazism and concludes with the results of humanity's lack of concern for others. Interweaving narrative, pictures, and quotations from victims, the book culminates with an extensive bibliographic essay, making this work an excellent resource for anyone interested in the Holocaust. Berenbaum guides the reader through the history and causes of Nazism, tracks the avenues that led to the mass destruction of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and various Slavic peoples, and illustrates Western inaction in assisting the victims. He offers evidence that demonstrates that the neglect and abandonment of Jews continued even after the end of WW II. General; community college; undergraduate; graduate. A. K. Steinberg Livingstone College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
In April 1993, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to open in Washington, D.C. More than 200 photographs from the museum's archives and artifact collection have been selected for this haunting book that chronicles the Holocaust's four historical participants: the victims, the perpetrators, the bystanders, and the rescuers. These are chilling photos: Jewish children being deported from the Lodz orphanage to the Chelmno death camp, Soviet Jews being executed in front of a ditch, mass graves of 7,000 Jews murdered in the Ukraine, Nazis rounding up 56,000 Jews during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, human hair shorn from prisoners in Auschwitz. Berenbaum calls his book a study of history focusing not on the museum but on the story of the Holocaust that is told in the museum. "Do not let the world forget," beseeched the victims and survivors alike. The World Must Know takes a giant step in honoring that plea. ~--George Cohen
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
To mark the occasion of the April 1993 opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Berenbaum, museum project director, has written a lucid, sweeping, but not superficial historical overview of the Holocaust. Replacing a typical museum catalog, which ordinarily lauds its museum's artifacts, this book uses them to tell the awful story to which the institution is dedicated. Utilizing the museum's photographs, oral histories, and other documents, Berenbaum synthesizes an enormous quantity of material, organizing it coherently to show the gradual evolution of the war against the Jews from the perspectives of the victims, perpetrators, and bystanders, while dealing with the fundamental themes of the Jewish experience. Visually evocative and unsettling, the book, supplemented with a useful bibliography, is an excellent choice for those who are not well acquainted with the subject or who need a concise synopsis; it will inspire readers to visit the museum and will enhance the experience of those who do.-- Benny Kraut, Univ. of Cincinnati (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Library Journal Review
