Kirkus Review
The tale of one Eastern European town reflects a long history of anti-Semitism and political strife.Bartov (European History/Brown Univ.; Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine, 2007, etc.) draws on historical and archival sources to create a stark portrait of a town in present-day Ukraine, where enmity between Polish and Ukrainian residents, compounded by Russian, Austrian, and German incursions, resulted in violent reactions against the Jewish population. This contribution to Holocaust and genocide studies, in which the author is a respected scholar, is notable for the barbarism that erupted among ordinary men and women against their Jewish neighbors during World War II. Anti-Semitism, however, was rampant much earlier: in a 1924 memoir, a witness reported seeing a Jewish orphanage set on fire by soldiers in search of vodka; in a synagogue courtyard, he "was stunned by a terrifying picture of destruction, vandalism, and cruelty." Houses were filled with raped Jewish women and "men with smashed heads and gouged eyes." Jews became the focus of hatred by Poles who believed that they preferred Austrian rule to Polish independence. Jews, Bartov writes, "were featured as an alien, inassimilable, and potentially subversive element," lumped together with despised Russians and communists. The most hated enemies were Ukrainians, characterized as savage hordes. Ukrainians, for their part, publicized their plight as victims, aligning themselves with Jews. During the war, ethnic hatred erupted into mass murder. Germans created local groups to suppress organized resistance, transforming the Ukrainian militia into "a uniformed district police force." Bartov profusely documents sadistic atrocities that occurred at the hands of soldiers, police, and security forces throughout the war. What he finds most shockingand readers will agreeis the "astonishing ease" with which "spouses and children, lovers and colleagues, friends and parents, appear to have enjoyed their brief murderous sojourn in the region" as they killed people they knew personally. "For many of them," he writes, "this was clearly the best time of their lives."An important and horrifying contribution to Holocaust studies. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
Best known for his first book, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (CH, Jan'92, 29-2869), Bartov (European history, Brown Univ.) has gone on to write many books dealing with war, genocide, and the Jews. Anatomy of a Genocide is the result of two decades of work. It is the story of his mothers' hometown of Buczacz, a border town in the historic region of Galicia, now in the western part of Ukraine. Bartov studies the town from its origins in the 13th century to the present. Using hundreds of first-person accounts, archival documents, and photographs, Bartov offers details regarding the history of the Jews and their everyday life in Buczacz. The first half of the book covers the period from the 13th century to the genocide of the Jews during WW II; the second half takes the story from WW II to the 21st century. Bartov shows that the death of more than 6,000,000 European Jews did not come simply out of the vitriol of the Nazi regime, but through feelings and attitudes that developed over time in the anti-Jewish sentiments of the people of Europe. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Brenda Louise Gaydosh, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Library Journal Review
How did Nazi genocide happen? Barton (history, Brown Univ.; Hitler's Army) answers the question by offering a thorough history of one town in Eastern Europe, where genocide occurred. Buczacz, now in western Ukraine, was home to Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the only Hebrew language writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, as well as the author's mother. Since the Middle Ages, the town has been populated by Roman Catholic Poles, Greek Orthodox Ukrainians, and Jews who lived side by side and for long periods harmoniously. The three groups acting out their conflicting views of who really belonged in Buczacz in an era of striving nationalism created conditions in which friends, neighbors, and even family members might perpetrate or aid in violence-and debates over which group was a colonizer, oppressor, or victim. By laying out the complex history of the social interactions of ethnic groups spanning a period of time, Bartov demonstrates how overly simple conceptions of Nazi genocide inadequately explain the reality. He utilizes testimonies, interviews, and judicial and other official records from nine countries to add supporting research. VERDICT New thinking about the nature of genocide, recommended especially for nonspecialists.-Paul A. D'Alessandro, Brunswick, ME © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
