Essential Shoah Reference

...This Encyclopedia is a treasured part of my library It will be used by a wide range of teachers, students and scholars, as well as by laypeople...

...The facts presented are reliable with the exception of an occasional error (Kurt Waldheim's commanding officer in West Bosnia was not Heinnch Stahl, but Fnedrich Stahl...

...The four volumes are well-printed and packaged and contain some fine illustrations, though other works outdistance it in this regard The maps could be improved upon, perhaps in a second edition...

...The volumes contain material about every aspect of the Holocaust— antisemitism and its history, deportations, the death camps, perpetrators and resisters, Nazi methods and foreign reactions The tone of the articles is objective, without being too detached from the horrors portrayed in them Good editorial work has provided a consistent style throughout the four volumes...

...I hope it will one day appear in an improved, paperback edition, making it accessible to even more people...

...Essential Shoah Reference Encyclopedia of the Holocaust Israel Gutman, editor in chief Macmillan, 1990 4 volumes, $440 00 Reviewed by Robert Edwin Herzstein The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust belongs in every research library, for it is the first reference work dealing with all aspects of the greatest crime in history...

...But, so far as I can tell, errors are both rare and relatively insignificant...

...The editorial board includes internationally respected scholars from many lands, including Martin Gilbert of Oxford University, Eberhard Jackel of the University of Stuttgart and Michael R Marrus of the University of Toronto...

...Readers of the Encyclopedia will probably wish to use it in conjunction with Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews, second edition (Holmes & Meier, 1985) For primary source materials see John Mendelsohn's The Holocaust Series (Garland, 1982) and Sybil Milton's and Henry Fnedlander's multi-volume Archives of the Holocaust (Kraus, 1986-1989) Nonetheless, this set is unique as a reference work for those interested in brief descriptions of persons and events related to the Holocaust...

...An Israeli product, published under the direction of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, the Encylopedia is available in BOOKS the United States through Macimllan...

...more statistical charts and data would also be appropriate And it would have been useful had the editors provided us with more adequate bibliographies and lists of original source materials...

...Robert Edwin Herzstein is Carolina Research Professor of history at the University of South Carolina specializing in German and Austrian history and World War II...