Reckonings

Description

Reckonings documents how Holocaust victims have sought justice over the decades and the haunting disparity between crime and punishment.

• Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, 2019
• Finalist for the 2019 Cundill History Prize
• Written by Mary Fulbrook, one of the world's most respected scholars on the Holocaust
• Investigates the long-term legacy of Nazi violence among perpetrators as well as victims
• Uses memory studies and oral histories to uncover buried personal and cultural memories

About the Author(s)

Mary Fulbrook, Dean of the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences, University College London

Mary Fulbrook is Professor of German History at University College London and the author of the Fraenkel Prize-winning A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust.

Table of Contents

1:Introduction: The significance of the Nazi Past
Part I. Chasms: Patterns of Persectuion
2:The Explosion of State-Sponsored Violence
3:Institutionalized Murder
4:Microcosms of Violence: Polish Prisms
5:Endpoint: The Machinery of Extermination
6:Defining Experiences
7:Silence and Communication
Part II. Confrontations: Landscapes of the Law
8:Transitional Justics
9:Judging Their Own: Selective Justice in the Successor States
10:From Euthanasia to Genocide
11:Major Concentration Camp Trials: Auschwitz and Beyonc
12:The Diffraction of Guilt
13:Late, Too Late
Part III. Connections: Memories and Explorations
14:Hearing the Voices of Victims
15:Making Sense of the Past, Living for the Present
16:Discomfort Zones
17:The Sins of the Fathers
18:The Long Shdows of Persecution
19:Oblivion and Memorialization
Conclusions
20:A Resonant Past

Reviews

"Reckonings is an apt title for this profound enquiry into the enormity of the Holocaust and the forms of justice with which it has been met ... What stands out in her scholarship and writing is the mutuality between her detailed tracking of structures and social processes, her knowledge of the vast literature on the Holocaust and her deep engagement, through extensive archival work, in the lives that produced, abetted, and suffered it - and still do." - Karl Figlio, Society

"This volume deserves prizes ... It is a sense of deep injustice, as well as horror, that will overcome readers of Reckonings: its main theme is how the overwhelming majority of those involved in the murder of an estimated six million men, women and children were either never brought to justice or were dealt with so leniently that it amounted to an insult to the victims." - Dominic Lawson, The Daily Mail

"The great strength of this book comes not from its revelations, but from the impact of the massive amount of information that [Fulbrook] has marshalled and the compelling way in which she has woven it together ... Mary Fulbrook has given that imbalance and failure to do justice the recognition it so well deserves. She had done so in an impressive and, if one can say so about such a depressing and distressing story, elegant fashion." - Deborah Lipstadt, Times Literary Supplement

"This masterly book challenges the ways, seven decades after the end of the war, that Europeans remember and commemorate a crime that still lies beyond understanding." - Christopher Hale, History Today

""[A] beautifully nuanced study ... It is not only full of fascinating facts and testimonies but it also gives one much food for thought, particularly on the subject of how populations can be swayed or manipulated even when they think they are sticking to their principles. A lesson for our and all times."" - Adam Zamoyski, Aspects of History

"Extraordinarily well-researched, filled with heartbreaking, heroic and harrowing life stories, Reckonings is comprehensive, cogent and compelling. Fulbrook's book is a must-read for anyone interested in the realities - and the legacies - of the Nazi Past." - Glenn C. Altschuler, The Jerusalem Post

"Well-written and impeccably researched, Mary Fulbrook's account of Nazi crime and punishment is a work of substance." - Pauline Paucker, Camden New Journal