Sources of Holocaust Research: An Analysis

Since the publication of his monumental Destruction of the European Jews forty years ago, Raul Hilberg has been the acknowledged master of Holocaust historians. In Sources of Holocaust Research he distills a lifetime of scholarly investigation into an indispensable primer on the use of sources in the writing of Holocaust history. "It is not a manual or epistemological treatise," Mr. Hilberg advises, "but an analysis of the types of materials, their composition, style, content, and usability." He goes on to describe, first, the "exterior" examination and classification of sources; next the "interior" view—the configuration, characteristic style, and highly selective content of the sources; and, finally, what may be extracted from them, considering the intrinsic problems of the material itself and the "external conditions." Throughout Mr. Hilberg makes use of a rich fund of examples and anecdotes to illustrate his principles. The result is a book that anyone seriously interested in Holocaust research must have.