Auschwitz: A History

Auschwitz: A History

by Shaun Whiteside (Translator), Sybille Steinbacher (Author)

Synopsis

At the terrible heart of the modern age lies Auschwitz. In a total inversion of earlier hopes about the use of science and technology to improve, extend and protect human life, Auschwitz manipulated the same systems to quite different ends. In Sybille Steinbacher's terse, powerful new book, the reader is led through the process by which something unthinkable to any European in the 1930s had become a sprawling, industrial reality during the course of the world war. How Auschwitz grew and mutated into an entire dreadful city, how both those who managed it and those who were killed by it came to be in Poland in the 1940s, and how it was allowed to happen, is something everyone needs to understand.

$12.29

Save:$1.59 (11%)

Quantity

3 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 05 Jul 2018

ISBN 10: 0141987480
ISBN 13: 9780141987484
Book Overview: A short, devastating study of history's most notorious killing ground.

Media Reviews
In concise and sober fashion, German historian Steinbacher traces the history of Auschwitz from a medieval trading town to the major extermination camp of the Holocaust. . . . Steinbacher, a visiting fellow for European studies at Harvard, avoids extensive analysis or morality tales; the meaning of Auschwitz is in the details, which she provides with clinical precision. --Publishers Weekly

A thoughtful overview of a place terrible to remember--and one that must always be remembered. --Kirkus Reviews


A multitude of books have been written on the camp, yet this brief volume has much to offer both laypersons and scholars interested in its history. . . . A cogent, penetrating work. --Booklist
Author Bio
Sybille Steinbacher teaches at The University of Bochum. She is currently Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. Shaun Whiteside is a previous winner of The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translations, and translator of The Birth of Tragedy and Musil's The Confessions of Young Toerless for Penguin Classics. He lives in London.