Millions of names are still missing of parents and children; nothing can remove this darkness from one of the most tragic events to ever happen in history, the Holocaust. There is a classic German legend about a man named Faust. He was a highly successful scholar but was dissatisfied with his life. His legend has created stories of his success in art and music, but the legendary of this man doesn’t end there. According to the legend, Faust sold his soul to the devil in exchange for vast earthly rewards. Millions of innocent Jews were killed by this so called legend, driven by a force of madness and evil of his own ancestors. In his own sick twisted mind he saw an opportunity to solve the problem once and for all by killing off the Jews. It is said that the Holocaust was based upon vague, trivial, or even inaccurate representations. With so much controversy and doubt on the Holocaust did or did it not really happen, everyone has their own point-of-view. Ironically for the people of Germany this legend had an all too real comparison to true events on its history. According to stories from survivors the voices of the dead can still be heard crying out for help. There are many authors who wrote books with great detail on the Holocaust, giving their perspective point of view on this tragic event. During the Holocaust it is said that over six million Jews suffered countless amounts of obscenity throughout the history of time. In the book Histories of the Holocaust by Dan Stone, the author describes the legendary of one man, the will to survive, the aftermath, and the ability of some people to still be compassionate to each other during a time of evil. Stone explains some of these agonizing conditions the Jewish people had to endure, even before the Holocaust on how their lives were miserable. Being forced out of their homes, the ones who were wealthy enough flee to a different country, and everyone else who couldn’t afford to flee were forced into concentration camps. The ones who fled to different countries were not all too lucky for the Nazis would occupy those countries as well. Some of the countries didn’t want to start any controversy with Germany, so they would simply refuse entry to any Jews into their countries, causing for them to be rounded up and being sent to concentration camps as well. Stone’s perspective of the Holocaust was the ideology of Nazism and taking over Europe by killing off the Jewish population known as the ‘Final Solution’. Although he establishes the Holocaust’s victims primarily in terms of the perpetrators own definition of their Jewish enemies and intimately connected to this as an important component to Germany’s war effort, Stone repeatedly stresses that the Nazi genocide also had large numbers of victims belonging to other ethnic communities or groups including Roma, Poles, Ukrainians and Soviet prisoners of war, as well as a smaller extent of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Black Germans and homosexuals. Stone focuses mostly on the perpetrators without neglecting their victims arguing that the examination of the former is crucial to the understanding of the Holocaust and the beliefs that motivated the Nazi decision. The mission to the Jews was the prerequisite for this massive effort, the development of the radicalizing dynamic that ended in a continent wide genocide against the Jews provide a broader canvas for understanding the unfolding of events. He consistently argues that this metaphysical and political grounding of the Nazi’s attitude towards the Jews renders the Holocaust and its distinctive character as the genocide of the Jews. He also stresses repeatedly that this finding excludes neither the fact that other groups primarily Gypsies and Slavs were victims of the genocide, nor its devastating consequences. On the other hand, he argues even the mass murder of Jews cannot be studied without understanding the Nazi’s general demographic view. Stone also argues the essence of the Holocaust cannot be viewed as a consequence of race science, he insist that despite the numerous non-rational presuppositions identified forming the basis of race science, it would be a mistake to overestimate its importance to the Nazi leaders. He demonstrates how the modern themes of race science technology and bureaucracy coalesced with ideological violence of conspiracy theory. He’s main debate of his book was between intentionalists and structuralists on the genocide of the Holocaust, giving the reader his perspective of such a tragic event. Stone wants to increase our optimism and comfort; a reflection on the Holocaust should chill us to the bone as we increasingly realize that the resources employed for the “Final Solution” are similar to those so familiar to us today. Which takes me into the next book on how betrayal of your closes friends depends on your life. In the book Golden Harvest by Jan Tomasz Gross and Irena Grudzinska Gross, they interpret their perspective of the Holocaust on images, which became a source of controversy. Gross goes into great detail of what the Polish people so called companions of the Jews betrayed them. As the Nazis invade Poland, they asked the Polish for their corporation in giving up the Jews. Doing so giving up the Jews in return the Polish were rewarded with the remains of the valuable belonging of their once called companions. Gross describes Poles hunting Jews down, extorting money from them, massacring them, and profiting by taking over their jobs and property. The pillaging of Jewish property was not limited to governments, Swiss banks, insurance companies, or museums; it was perpetrated by local people, such as those depicted in the photograph. And as Gross points out these digs of the Golden Harvest went on for decades at all the death camps. Gross believes that the local population living alongside the Jews for centuries by and large appreciated the Nazi policy of cleansing the area of Jews and tried to enrich themselves in the process. They saw it as a great opportunity to get wealthy and survive the Holocaust without being killed. There was so much speculation and controversies when this book was published with the Polish community denying the so-called Golden Harvest. The intention of these two authors was to describe the images of the Polish scavenging through the mountains of ashes from their fellow companions to collect valuables. The focus of their book is confined to the expression of anti-semitism by non-Jewish Poles much of it extremely, violent, brutal, inhumane, and barbarous. They also speculate that if the conditions were right anyone would do the same to survive, even if it means taking someone’s life. So much controversy on how one can do something so inhumane to a companion that would be in denial for the rest of their lives, taking me into the next book of truth and memory on the Holocaust. Is the Holocaust really a hoax? According to Deborah Lipstadt in her book Denying the Holocaust The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory she is trying to convince others of the relevance of it. She is an author in whom she does believe that the Holocaust was real and the blood of six million Jews was shed. She gives many examples of allegations that six million Jews were not systematically exterminated but rather million Jews also died of disease and other causes. Her ideologies of the Holocaust are that it should be mentioned as a controversial but have somewhat of a valid view on it. Lipstadt predominantly focuses upon the backgrounds and methods employed by the deniers. She demonstrates clearly and unambiguously the blatant twisting of truth and fabricating of material undertaken by these individuals in their publication. For example, Lipstadt cites the case of prison execution “engineer” Fred Leuchter and his “report” on the Nazi gas chambers. Leuchter traveled to Germany at the invitation of a neo-fascist group, to evaluate the concentration camp gas chambers, Leuchter publicly proclaimed that true gas chambers did not exist at the Nazi death camps. She mentioned one of the tactics that deniers use to achieve their ends is to camouflage their goals, in attempt to hide the facts. Lipstadt sees Holocaust denial as “purely anti-semitic, she outlines the history of Holocaust denial claims that it is increasing and should not be disregarded. Holocaust deniers were originally a lunatic fringe and could be seen as harmless cranks but are now more numerous and influential than before. There are many arguments that contradict many of the events that took place during the Holocaust like the gas chambers. Lipstadt stated” its as if a jury refused to convict a serial killer until one of his victims came back to say, “Yes, he is the one who killed me.” The main argument of Lipstadt is that denying the holocaust is nonsense and an insult trying to restore the good name of history. Lipstadt shows how the deniers cook up phony evidence while ignoring the voluminous testimony of survivors, eyewitness and self-confessed Nazi war criminals. And she patiently unravels the truths and outright lies that amount to an international propaganda crusade. The conspiracy theorists are themselves a kind of international conspiracy of misinformation, which would lead me into the book Among the Righteous. In this very personal book on the Holocaust, Among the Righteous by Robert Satloff he does his personal research on stories of the Holocaust. In his book Satloff follows Germany’s genocide plan to wipe out the Jews in North Africa during World War II. He sought the passive role of the Arab masses during the persecution of their Jewish neighbors, but rather the more sinister participation of some Arabs in the mistreatment of Jews. These included despoiling Jewish property; acting as informants for the Italian, French or Nazi authorities and serving as guards and tormentors in the labor and punishment camps for local and foreign Jews. As in European countries, some neighbors helped the Nazis and other helped the Jews, either collaborating with the Nazis or risking their own lives helping the Jews of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.Satloff also recalls the principled stance of the Muslim spiritual leadership in Algiers who warned their flock from the pulpit not take advantage of the Vichy authorities offers to take possession of sequestered Jewish property. He rightly notes that their personal expressions of sympathy towards Jews, mainly in private but also in public, did help morale and eventually took on mythic proportions in Jewish collective memory. Satloff did his research and traveled to locations of the labor camps and communities to get his facts on the Holocaust. He finds to his surprise that such examples of heroism and humanity are not only unknown to the descendants of these individuals, but that on learning what happened, the family members display no interest or even hostility. This attitude concluded results from the Arab-Israeli conflict and from the Holocaust denial and Holocaust minimization that are ubiquitous in the Muslim world. Instead of simply trying to educate Arabs and Muslims susceptible to Holocaust denial about the realities of the tragedy, he has told a hopeful positive and constructive point of history. The main focus of his book is the reality of the personal stories of Arabs who helped Jews but also includes solid compilations. Satloff understanding is that the Holocaust did happen and wants to let us know the facts about it through untold stories. The truth should be accepted that the Holocaust did happen and many Jews were helped or betrayed, like the United States denying entry of Jews. A shocking book that I knew nothing about was on how the U.S. has something to do with the Holocaust. The book by Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died A Chronicle of American Apathy shows us the American history and effect it had on the Holocaust. Arthur Morse gives examples after examples of how all of the existing immigration laws were twisted, tightened and squeezed to keep the Jewish refugees form finding a new home in the United States. The way I see was we were just another country that left them to fend helplessly for themselves in Nazi Germany. Morse argues very persuasively that more expeditious American action might have saved many more. He analyzes the options presented to Washington by Jewish leaders and demonstrates that these schemes were until the eleventh hour rejected by the Allies. He explores in some degree what efforts were made in behalf of the Jews and others and attempts to fix responsibility for inaction at the crucial moments of the developing Nazi pogroms, establishing beyond serious contention that the efforts of the American government were at the very least lethargic and at best overcautious. Morse is reminding us of the anti-Semitism that generations after the Holocaust find hard to understand. Americans can say that our government behavior at the time wasn’t any worse than that of other governments. It’s just a shame it wasn’t any better either. America has faced its disgrace over its past racism and the scandal of the Japanese camps. However this book and Morse has given me a better perspective of what kind of trouble the Jews had to endure to get away from Nazis Germany. Stories of survivors and eyewitness of the Holocaust is what gives the truth of what really happen in the following book we see the destruction of mirrors of some of those survivors. The book Mirrors of Destruction by Omer Bartov is a study in perceptions and its central focus is the Holocaust. Bartov argues that the special agony of the Holocaust is that most of the perpetrators got off very lightly, while the survivors suffered from guilt over their good fortune. In his introduction Bartov writes “ it is my assertion that the project of remaking humanity and defining identity has been at the core of this century, and that much of this project was characterized by tremendous destructive urge followed by a long and as yet uncompleted process of coming to terms with the disasters it has produced and is still producing in many parts of the world.” My understanding is this should in no way be seen as an attempt to diminish the importance of other genocide and identity for it also talks about other genocides. But clearly this doesn’t distinguish the Holocaust form a large number of atrocities that have been inadequately dealt with and survivors will feel guilty even after natural disaster where humanity could not be held responsible. According to Bartov, the Holocaust was the direct heir of the industrial-scale killings first witnessed in World War I, “The Great War’s new fields of glory, “ he writes, “were the breeding ground of fascism and Nazism, of human degradation and extermination, and from them sprang the storm strop of dictatorships and demagogues of racial purity and exclusion.” Also some of the large importance of Bartov books is how Israel’s own tortured reaction to the Holocaust. The account of France’s failure to confront in which has become a commonplace. Bartov’s gives at least a partial truth to his statement, which we look in the mirror of the Holocaust we see, our own reflection in the manner in which a variety of perspectives on violence have molded European views and redefined individual and collective identities in a process of emulation, mutual reflection and distortion. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act. I believe people should have taken some kind of action. Leading by example doing more good than evil. The Holocaust was a big tragic event and many authors have their ideology of such an event. In the book by Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, A History of the Holocaust from Ideology to Annihilation discusses her interest of the Holocaust. Told with scrupulous attention to detail and accuracy this book examines the cause and events of the Holocaust providing important information on Jewish life in Europe, the functions of the hierarchy within the Nazi government and psychological foundation of prejudice. Bostwinick explains the sequence of events that led up to what we now refer to as the Holocaust. She documents on how the Nazis had carefully and meticulously concealed the existence of death camps from the German people, yet states that all Germans share equal accountability and guilt for the Holocaust, as doing nothing about the Holocaust was equal to active participation in it Bostwinick also repeatedly criticizes the United States and The United Kingdom for doing nothing to stop the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. This book can be somewhat be compared to the one written by Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died A Chronicle of American Apathy, which describes as United States not helping the Jewish. Bostwinick is a native of Germany and gives her perspective of the Holocaust not defending her family but giving the truth. The truth be told as I would like to say it, Norman G. Finkelstein wrote the book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering to explain in his own perspective of the Holocaust. Finkelstein basic point is that there are certain groups in the state of Israel and the world Jewish community who use the Holocaust as a means of protecting themselves. They use the Holocaust as a justification. Dedicating this book to his family for they were survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. His personal interest in preserving the historical record of the Nazi holocaust. Finkelstein shows how the Holocaust industry transformed the Nazi holocaust into an ideological construct. He thoroughly documents the Holocaust industry’s distortions, deceptions, and its use of the memory of the Nazi holocaust for advancing its favorite political objectives. Finkelstein also has uncovered a litany of lies and deceptions. The number of actual survivors were widely inflated he argues that bogus survivors published fraudulent memoirs to international acclaim. Arguing that the dominant exposition of the Holocaust is based on political and class interest that seek to portray Jews as the sole victims. That there was a general indifference to the Holocaust in the United States even among American Jews. He also sees the Holocaust as a restitution conspiracy, more likely just another manifestation of the culture of historical victimization that has so afflicted American society. He argues that the Holocaust is a unique event and it is a climax of an irrational gentile hatred of Jews, showing that the facts are contrary to the claims of the Holocaust. It is profoundly anti-humane to belittle other people’s sufferings since the development of empathy is an essential human quality and the mark of humanism. If it is indeed incomprehensible then surely the Holocaust Industry task has been not to explain the inexplicable but rather either self-promotion or aggrandizement. I believe there is no intellectual or moral reason for not comparing the sufferings of one group to another, if anything the suggestion that the pains of others pale in comparison is an immoral one. Finkelstein purpose of his book is to go beyond exposing a massive scandal of the Holocaust and a fitting tribute to his parent’s legacy. The truth is always hard to prove to some people but Finkelstein and the help of his parent’s stories gave him the ability to but it out there for everyone to know the truth. Just like hiding the truth America didn’t want to face it, in the book The Holocaust in American Life written by Peter Novick he focuses on the way the discourse around the holocaust is presented today, including the past and why it has changed. American attitudes towards the Holocaust from the time of the war until the present has been highly controversial. Novick argues against the misuse of the Holocaust and to reveal how contemporary consciousness is lodged in political conditions. One of the most important key discussion is of the uniqueness of the Holocaust, which Novick shows to be both historically inaccurate and dangerous in leading down the slippery slope where any other more recent catastrophes and disasters are minimized in comparison. Opposing the ethnic exclusivity that largely characterizes Holocaust he points out that the policy of mass murder was in the first instance directed against Soviet POWs, and that for the first five years of Hitler’s regime concentration camps inmates were overwhelmingly communists, socialists, trade unionist or other opponents of the regime. In another controversial section Novick argues that Americans did not abandon Hitler’s victims, that the position of the American support founding of Israel as an act of moral expiation for being passive bystanders to genocide. Novick also goes into detail of why did America pay little attention to the Holocaust before 1967 and so much attention to it afterwards. Novick argues that before 1967 the genocide of Jews was underemphasized for a number of reasons, some good and some bad. He also describes the Holocaust served as the ultimate crime and American discourse invoked it to launch a thousand bad analogies. He points out the Holocaust was viewed as part of history, an aspect of a period, the era of fascism, but as the Holocaust moved from history to myth it became the bearer of eternal truths not bound by historical circumstances. Where the political of American interests left off, the historical relativism fostered by postmodernist intellectual tendencies stepped in. Stressing that these trends coincided with general growth of identity politics and the new ethnicity promoted in the wake of the decline of American liberalism. He asserted that American guilt over the Holocaust was not the rational behind the US government support for the creation of a Jewish state. Novick perspectives were to focuses on how the Holocaust is being ignored and being manipulated too much, a contribution on political life in twentieth century America. According to the book The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War by Martin Gilbert, he describes a comprehensive history of the Holocaust. He starts the book by showing that hatred of the Jewish people has a long history in Europe. Gilbert idea of the Jews as “Christ killers” which has been around for centuries. He also talks about confiscation of wealth, herding individuals in trains, and depriving them of water and sanitation, gas chambers, killing babies and much more. He also with a brief history of some anti-Semitism in Germany. That the Nazi nightmare occurred less than 70 years ago still makes your skin crawl, he points out nearly everyone of the tens of thousands of true human monsters in Germany and Poland never spent a day in prison for their mass murdering of nearly six million Jews. Only a handful of Nazi monsters were given show trials and even those couldn’t understand the world’s outrage of what they had done. He proves once and for all, that it wasn’t just a few food Germans who eagerly participated in this national nightmare. Naming priests, judges, bankers, professors, farmers, and many more. Some of the latter decide to ignore their farms so they could go out and hunt down Jews. Reading this was so disturbing how so many people could be so inhumane and not care for other people. Some would stand above the victims in a courtyard and bounce balloons down on the prisoners. He pursues their individual identities and humanity by the postwar future of these people. So much has been written about the Holocaust that it is difficult to imagine much of the tragic events everyone talks about. Gilbert uses a massive amount of primary and secondary sources to tell of the horrific thing that happened to the Jews. Using testimony from survivors, diaries of those who perished, German documents, and the words of the perpetrators themselves. The unspeakable cruelty the sadistic acts and the scope of crimes committed by the Nazi regime are laid out with anti-Semitism once again on the rise in many parts of the world. He speaks of the truth of the horrifying stories of what went on in the ghettoes, concentration camps, and other places. Gilbert’s perspective of the holocaust is simple and effective; he provides a matter of fact outline of the events from the holocaust. The Holocaust was a tragic and broad-sweeping act of racism that never should have happened. Anti-Semitism was prevalent until after the Second World War, and dates back to long before the death of Jesus Christ. This unfortunate history helped shape Hitler’s and Germany beliefs that Jews are impure and disgusting. Anti-Semitism and Racism should never have been allowed to thrive or even thought of anywhere, and if it hadn’t been for the British victory in the Second World War, that hatred would have continued to thrive in most places across Europe and beyond. All of these books gave valuable information on the tragic events that took place during the Holocaust. They show what people did to help the Jews out and what others did to betray them. The evil of one man can be so powerful that cause so much pain, suffrage and death to so many but yet it took years for something to be done to stop such a horrible genocide. It is important to remember and study the Holocaust because many things that allowed the Holocaust to happen, including racism, still occur today, and we cannot risk allowing history to repeat itself. Given that Holocaust is widely accepted as one of the worst things, and maybe the single worst thing to happen in history it would be foolish to forget, ignore or minimize it and allow something like that to happen again.

Bibliography

1. Bartov, Omer. Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity. Oxford University Press (January 31,2002).
This book gave me information on different types of wars and genocides around the world. It talked about the Holocaust and compared them to other events around the world. Talking about the destruction of between total war and state-organized genocide.

2. Botwinick, Rita S. A History of the Holocaust: From Ideology to Annihilation. Pearson; First Edition (November 30, 1997)
With scrupulous attention to detail and accuracy this book provide me with important background information on Jewish life in Europe. Also giving me the functions of the hierarchy within the Nazi government, and the psychological foundation of prejudice.

3. Finkelstein, Norman G. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Verso; Second Edition (October 17, 2003)
The holocaust Industry shoes how the holocaust has been abused to make money to defend Israel’s atrocious human rights record and to promote the interests of the American Jewish community. Also talks about the Holocaust deniers claiming they were no less victims of Nazism.

4. Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War. Holt Paperbacks; Reprint edition (May 15, 1987)
Giving me the general understanding of how the rise of the Nazi in Germany impacted the Jewish people as well as those other ethic groups during the Second World War.

5. Gross, Jan T., and Gross, Irena G. Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust. Oxford University Press; First Edition (April 30, 2012)
Betray is what was more valuable to me from this book, many Jewish were betrayed by their companions. The Polish would give up the Jews in return for their valuables sparing their lives and enriching themselves along the process.

6. Lipstadt, Deborah E. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. Plume; Reprint Edition (July 1, 1994)
This book explained the deniers throughout history, the methods they employ and the danger they pose is both shocking and eye opening. Exposing the lies, deceits and fabrications of those who are continuing the Nazi war against the Jews.

7. Morse, Arthur D. While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy.
Our anti-Semitic state department knew exactly what was happening to Jews in Europe in WWII and they really didn’t do anything to help them out. They made it more difficult for Jews to come to the U.S.

8. Novick, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life. Mariner Books ( Septermber 20, 2000).
Another book that illuminates the reasons Americans ignored the Holocaust for so long, making the Holocaust the emblematic Jewish experience. Discussing the representations and discourses of the holocaust.

9. Satloff, Robert. Among the Righteous. Public Affairs (October 9, 2007)
Thousand of people have been honored for saving Jews during the Holocaust but not a single Arab. This book helped me looking for a response to the denial sweeping of the Holocaust across the Arab and Muslim world.

10. Stone, Dan. Histories of the Holocaust. Oxford University Press (August 13,2010)
This book gave me information concentrating on the work of the last two decades, examines the Final Solution as a European project, the decision-making process, cultural history and much more on the Holocaust.

--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. Dan Stone, Histories of the Holocaust (Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 2010), 15.
[ 2 ]. Ibid. , 19.
[ 3 ]. Ibid, 38.
[ 4 ]. Ibid, 111-112
[ 5 ]. Ibid,156.
[ 6 ]. Jan Tomasz Gross and Irena Grudzinska Gross, Golden Harvest (Oxford University Press, Inc. New York, New York, 2012), 3.
[ 7 ]. Ibid, 13.
[ 8 ]. Ibid, 71.
[ 9 ]. Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (The Free Press A Division of Macmillan, Inc. New York, 1993), 16.
[ 10 ]. Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous: Lost stories from the Holocaust’s long reach into Arab Lands (Public Affairs, New York, 2006), 9.
[ 11 ]. Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy (New York: Random House, 1968) 98.
[ 12 ]. Ibid, 12.
[ 13 ]. Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity ( Oxford University Press, USA, 2002) 230.
[ 14 ]. Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, A History of The Holocaust: From Ideology to Annihilation (Pearson Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2009) 2.
[ 15 ]. Norman G. Finkeistein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering ( Verso, New York, 2003) 7.
[ 16 ]. Ibid, 24.
[ 17 ]. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life ( Mariner Books, New York, 2000) 3.
[ 18 ]. Ibid,23.
[ 19 ]. Ibid, 24.
[ 20 ]. Ibid, 102.
[ 21 ]. Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War (Holt Paperbacks, New York, 1987) 5.
[ 22 ]. Ibid, 38.