Auschwitz Not long ago. not far away

In this haunting work, historians Van Pelt, Ferreiro, and Greenbaum present a powerful companion to the eponymous international exhibition. The exhibition-and the book-focuses on "the traces of genocide, the remnants of a murdered people, and the material evidence of crimes against humanity." Jews, Poles, POWs, Roma, and homosexuals were all targets of the Nazis and collaborators, and the authors tell their stories through photographs, letters, drawings, anti-Semitic propaganda posters, and artifacts (the socks of an eight-year-old girl that muffled the sound of her walking while she hid in Poland). All the images converge to depict the horrific and revolting way in which Auschwitz was designed not just to murder, but to destroy and dehumanize the spirit of its victims: there's a photo of the courtyard of Block 11, where many prisoners were executed naked by firing squad, and another of a young Jewish woman wailing as she was rounded up in Berlin. The authors include prisoner stories that illustrate the many acts of bravery and rebellion, including that of Witold Pilecki, a second lieutenant in the Polish cavalry, who led a resistance movement while imprisoned. This informative and disturbing photographic history serves as an immensely moving reminder of the atrocities of Auschwitz. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In 2001, the Museum of Jewish Heritage opened in lower Manhattan, in sight of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Now the third-largest Holocaust museum in the world, it has devoted three of its floors to a major traveling exhibit. Historian van Pelt (Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present) offers not only a catalog of the exhibit but an authoritative history of the transformation of the small Polish village named after the Aramaic word for guests to a Nazi death camp where 1.1 million people were killed. As visitors approach the exhibit, they are confronted by a German National Railway freight car similar to the ones that carried men, women, and children to the camps. They then walk through hundreds of photographs, maps, architectural plans, works of art, artifacts--ragged shoes, coats, dresses, prisoners' uniforms, a trumpet played by a jazz musician--and even a reconstruction of an Auschwitz barracks. The items come from the museum's collection as well as from Poland's Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and more than 20 other institutions and private collections from around the world. VERDICT Whether readers have visited the Auschwitz museum or are experiencing it here for the first time, this comprehensive yet accessible work presents a sobering history. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.--Marcia G. Welsh, Dartmouth Coll. Lib., Hanover, NH