By Guy Somerset on Newsroom (Reading Room)…
The latest manifestation of the Holocaust’s ripples through history is a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas after 15 months of … whatever the hell that was. Conflict? War? Genocide? Pick your word depending on your point of view. ‘Hell’ would certainly cover it, though.
The overlapping consequences of Nazi Germany’s murder of six million Jews – as well as what’s estimated to be another six million Soviet prisoners of war, non-Jewish Poles, Romani, people with disabilities, political opponents, ‘criminals’, ‘asocials’ and others – are felt to this day and will continue to be felt well into the future.
Even without that reach through time, the Holocaust’s scale, cold calculus and industrialisation of mass murder remain such an affront to humanity, and to the complacent myth of early 20th-century Europe’s ‘civilised’ superiority, that it never ceases to horrify and be a source of grim fascination.
Countless books seek to remember, comprehend and/or explain the Holocaust and its atrocities, and long may that be so. It is, however, a subject that demands a duty of care.
Read the full review on Newsroom here.
