Saul Friedländer
The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939- 1945.
HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006. First printing. 9780060190439 xxvi/870 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.5", is bound in black paper spine and boards, with stamped silver lettering to spine. Book and dust jacket are new. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"With "The Years of Extermination," Saul Friedländer completes his major historical work on Nazi Germany and the Jews. The book describes and interprets the persecution and murder of the Jews throughout occupied Europe. The enactment of German extermination policies and measures depended on the cooperation of local authorities, the assistance of police forces, and the passivity of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. This implementation depended as well on the victims’ readiness to submit to orders, often with the hope of attenuating them or of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.
This multifaceted study—at all levels and in different places—enhances the perception of the magnitude, complexity, and interrelatedness of the many components of this history. Based on a vast array of documents and an overwhelming choir of voices—mainly from diaries, letters, and memoirs—Saul Friedländer avoids domesticating the memory of these unprecedented and horrific events. The convergence of these various aspects gives a unique quality to "The Years of Extermination." In this work, the history of the Holocaust has found its definitive representation."