Perpetrating the Holocaust: Leaders, Enablers, and Collaborators

Gr 9 Up—Genocide scholar and history professor Bartrop and lawyer and Holocaust consultant Grimm have produced a companion volume to Bartrop's Resisting the Holocaust. Like the earlier volume, this work focuses on sampling a range of perpetrators rather than examining the worst offenders. Without analyzing specific individuals' motives or judging the nature of their guilt, the book succinctly summarizes the careers of almost 150 out of the thousands responsible for the Shoah. Brief contextualizing information precedes, and commentary follows, each of the 25 primary source documents (from Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Höss, and others). There is a chronology (1919–46), an extensive bibliography, cross-referencing, and two dozen informatively captioned black-and-white photos. Even condensed accounts of the perpetrators' childhoods convey a sense of the interwar Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, and the anti-Semitism rampant from Egypt to Latvia. Some of those profiled here were executed; others evaded justice, served brief sentences, led prosperous (sometimes anonymous) lives, and died free.