The Holocaust Encyclopedia

Although most libraries now contain many shelves of books describing various aspects of the Holocaust, comprehensive one-volume histories or reference books on the subject are rare. Thus, The Holocaust Encyclopedia, edited by Walter Lacquer (a modern European historian who has taught at Harvard, Brandeis, and Tel Aviv University, among others), fills an important gap in existing Holocaust literature. His book gathers accessible articles by many of the world's leading Holocaust scholars on the full range of people and places involved, from Adolph Hitler and Gypsies to Russia and the Soviet Union. The articles are complemented by a comprehensive chronology and an excellent bibliographical essay, and by almost 300 illustrations, including maps and photographs. The photographs, by Adam Kaczkowski, are particularly well chosen and designed. Photography's importance in the act of Holocaust remembrance is poignantly understated by Roger Greenspun in his entry on "Cinema and Television," in which he writes, "This was the first great human catastrophe to have so many pictures taken of it." The Holocaust Encyclopedia will become the first stop in the library for high school students wishing to learn about the Holocaust. It will also provide college students and adults with a reliable, authoritative, big-picture perspective on aspects of a genocide that, no matter how fully it is known, will never fully be understood. -- Michael Joseph Gross