The Holocaust Chronicle recounts the anguishing story of the most terrible crime of the 20th century. During World War II, six million Jews-as well as other targeted groups including Poles, the handicapped, and homosexuals-were systematically murdered by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Although the weight and heft of The Holocaust Chronicle cannot capture the immensity of its subject, the book's 768 pages suggest that the Holocaust is a topic that must be openly confronted. Written and fact-checked by top scholars, the book offers:

• A 3,000-item timeline pinpointing specific events that contributed to the Holocaust, such as Nazi Germany occupation during World War II, the sealing of urban ghettos in Europe, and the deportation of millions of Jews to death camps.
• Nearly 2,000 photographs chronicling the Holocaust in starkly visual terms, including images of the massacre of more than 33,000 Ukrainian Jews at Babi Yar and pictures from the liberation of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
• Fourteen chapter-opening essays that put the most important years of the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath into perspective, beginning with Hitler's rise to power and ending with the convictions of such Nazi officials as Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg Trial.
• More than 250 sidebars detailing the significant places, issues, events, and people of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank and Heinrich Himmler.
• An extensive prologue and epilogue that discuss the buildup to and aftermath of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust Chronicle is a not-for-profit enterprise made available at a low price to allow widespread distribution. The book is part of Legacy Publishing's historical series.

768-page history of the Jewish Holocaust

Hundreds of rare photographs

Written by Holocaust scholars

3000-item timeline

Average Customer Review: ( 34 customer reviews )
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As a Jewish high school educator, I know that this book will be a valuable resource in my classroom for years to come.

It is a difficult subject, and therefore this book can be exhausting as you leaf through it's almost 800 pages, but it is a subject that needs to discussed and taught for generations to come.

Buy this book. Give it to your school, put it on your bookshelf at home. You will be glad you did.

31 of 33 found the following review helpful:

informativeDec 17, 2003
By Michael N. Ryan
This book is one of the best sources of information on Hitler's bloody act of social engineering I have come across.

However, it does have deficiencies I would like to see corrected in a future edition.

It mentions the crimes of Aufseherin Irma Grese, but gives somebody else's picture.

But even worse, it omitts the activities of Germany's very activist Juduciary in assisting, through Dynamic Interpretation, (what would not be called 'evolving standards'),the nazis with their agenda.

It does not mention the case of Erich Charrel vs Ufa Film studios in which the courts defined Jews as being Legally Dead, (Civil Death) as far as contractual purposes are concerned.

Nor does it mention the Airforce House Conference of 23 -24 April of 1941 in Berlin where the heads of the courts gave Hitler a green light to murder the sick and others deemed as people with Lives unworthy of life. (This actually shocked me). Though it mentions Wannsee Conference.

Nor does it mention the travesties after the war in which the courts of Germany and Austria covered for the murderers. Granting them pensions. And givingthem mere slaps on the wrists for murdering thousands if not tens of thousands of innocent human beings.

I did like the listing of the dead, as far as numbers go. But to make them more effective at comunicating the extent of the attrocity, I wish they had given the number of dead with the number available to be murdered.

Beyond these flaws, this is an excellent book on the subject of the Holocaust.

24 of 25 found the following review helpful:

Amazingly researched and meticulous in detailNov 02, 2000
By Jake Barrow
This massive volume is undoubtedly the most comprehensive collection of text, illustrations, and pictures that I have ever encountered. Never before have I seen such care and thoroughness applied to a book about the Holocaust. Every single page is packed, and I mean PACKED, with every tidbit of information you could possibly want to know. You could literally spend hours with it in your lap and just scratch the surface of what's inside.

The appeal of this title not only applies to research afficionados but to the general public as well. The style in which it is written flows very easily and does not sound like an encyclopedia entry, which would turn me right off.

This book is an absolute and definitive must for any person who has an interest in the history of the Holocaust. Do yourself a favor. Track down this book and buy it on the spot!

17 of 17 found the following review helpful:

The enabling preconditions, actual events and aftermath of the Holocaust.Sep 13, 2006
By D. Reinstein "marindavid"
Three books in one: A detailed 1) history, 2)timeline and 3)personal vignettes that create a rich hologram-like view of the enabling preconditions, actual events and aftermath of the Genocide of the Jews of Europe at the hands of the Nazis.

Back in July of this year, I wrote a review of Ellie Wiesel's "Night," a new edition that had been translated by his own daughter. This small book captured the essence of one man's subjective experience with the subject of this much larger effort, contributed to by dozens of historians and scholars and published by a non-profit organization. This is not a `sit down and read a book today' publication. Each of it's 750 richly illustrated pages are packed with personal stories about individual people, a detailed on-going time-line, detailed with specific events beginning in 1500 BCE (The modern Jewish term for "BC", standing for "Before the Common Era."), and passing through the establishment of the State of Israel and into the late 1990's, and a continuous narrative history of more details than most people have ever imagined were available in the telling of this particularly horrific tale of humanity gone wrong. There is, in fact, so much information, that each page calls for a slow overview, and then at least several readings to capture the totality of what is being presented. It is a book to which ongoing time must be devoted to really appreciate what it gives us: As Dragnet's Sgt. Joe Friday would have said, "Nothing but the facts."

The Preconditions:

Through hundreds of historical, scholarly, organizational and literary references, this book makes it clear that without certain preconditions having been developing in European (and, indeed, in world-wide) culture for many centuries, Hitler could never of orchestrated what in the Jewish Community is referred to as the Sho'ah. Ascribing Germany's readiness to follow their fascist leader and his cronies into the annihilation of about six-million Jews as well as millions of Catholics, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, physically handicapped and mentally ill people, homosexuals and others to the aftermath of Versailles is shown to be a gross over-simplification. Anti Semitism (not always known by that now well-known name) had existed across the face of much of the globe for many centuries. The realities across the world, indeed including here in our own United States, were active contributors to creating the preconditions that allowed the Holocaust to happen. Impressive in this particular book is that unlike so many others, the authors painstakingly provide documentary evidence and facts that support this and other key concepts. As is the case with the other two parallel tracks of this volume, the actual events of the Holocaust itself and the aftermath, the preconditions are examined and documented through all three of the `tracks' of this book: The narrative history, the timeline and the individual storied and personal vignettes.

The Event Itself:

The Holocaust itself - the trail leading up to the actualization of what was referred to, privately amongst the Nazi leadership, as the "Final Solution?" - and their ultimate efforts to completely eliminate Jewry from the face of the parts of the world they controlled are carefully documented as well. This is the part of the story best known to modern audiences, but is given here a context far more comprehensive than what has been attempted before - and it is all written in non-technical terms that make the massive information it contains available to most people who 1) can read, 2) are interested in the subject, and 3) are willing to spend the appreciable time it takes to go through and absorb the rather massive amount of information contained in these pages. The events of planful, deliberate genocide are not and can not be fully separated from the preconditions described both earlier in the book and periodically referred to as the timeline progresses.

No one is held harmless. From the Nazis themselves, to the many nations of the Earth, including our own, that denied sanctuary via more open immigration policies in the late 1930's when it became undeniably clear what the goals and activities of Hitler's regime was.

The Aftermath:

This section of the book concerns itself with what happened as a result of the genocide, both in the short run and continuing into modern times. The establishment of the State of Israel, the multiple issues associated with that; the Germany of the post-war era, both as a modern economic force as well as the bearer of so much of the responsibility for one of mankind's darkest hours, the relationships of the Catholic Church and of the American government to the past, present and future of humanity: None of these escape the attention of the authors and compilers of this impressive, comprehensive and engaging book.

Suffice it to say that this review only scratches the surface of the material covered and the depths to which it is articulated in this volume. I make no apologies for being relatively brief. If you have the interest and the time, this is one of those handful of published works that just might change your life. It is simply not possible to have so much revealed, in so many forms at so many levels, and not be somehow reshaped by the experience.

The most reader-friendly and clearest description of one of humanities greatest calamities I have ever read. I think you will agree.

11 of 11 found the following review helpful:

Makes the holocaust painfully realAug 05, 2002
By Andy J "Just Truth"
I have read extensively on the holocaust, visited many of the ghettoes of Europe and this year visited Auschwitz/Birkenau.
Amazingly it was this book that gave me the feeling that I finally understood something of the enormity of the pain and suffering and the amazing heroism of many of Europe's Jews in withstanding the assault initiated by the Nazis and extended by many others...it made me simultaneoulsy proud to be a human and also ashamed.

There are a few flaws.. but they are overwhelmed by the incredible array of facts and human stories that populate its pages...It is what a book should be.

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