The Politics of Memory

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The person behind the books. - Rated
An excellent book which will be of interest to students of Hilberg's seminal works. Family background, early life, pathbreaking (and lonely) researches in archives, academic & publishing woes (and rejections), and, eventually, long-deserved (though never unanimous)recognition.

Hilberg remains clear-minded and dry-eyed throughout, telling his story with a dignity worthy of the topic which he (almost) made all his own.

This is pretty damned essential material for students of the Shoah - make sure you've read (at least) the one-volume ed. of his "Destruction of the European Jews" first. Then read "Politics of Memory" - but don't weep; Hilberg didn't. He just remained true to his work, and true to the memory whose sufferings he catalogued so well.

Journey without maps - Rated
An understated memoir from one of the great historians.

As the previous reviewer put it: "the language of the book is unusual and its laconism, though sometimes veiling the sense, is accompanied by inner dramatic beauty and power."

That power and laconism is extraordinary given on the one side the challenges - personal and professional - of the work Hilberg did, and the depth of animosity directed against him over the years.

The book is also a striking account of how the person writing the history we read, is the trustee and guarantor of our understanding of people's lives. That trustee's motivations and discipline have therefore a very great bearing on how we imagine the world we live in, and what we project on to others.

It is for that reason that the arguments around the Destruction of the European Jews - and later over books such as Browning's Ordinary Men Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland - have been so important to us all.

Hilberg ends the book with a quotation from HG Adler, survivor and subsequent historian of Theresienstadt, which Hilberg says, made him feel "he has peered directly into the core of my being......[Adler writes:] 'What moves me in this book is the hopelessness of the author...At the end, nothing remains but despair and doubt about everything, because for Hilberg there is only recognition, perhaps also a grasp, but cerainly no understanding..."

Adler's words are also a tribute to the reserves Hilberg must have had to work alone and by his own wits on such a challenging work for so long.

Summary of life & work of the greatest Holocaust historian - Rated
The memoir is a much needed supplement for the scholarly works of undoubtedly peerless Holocaust researcher. All the process of transforming of Holocaust studies from metaphysical reflections into a scholarly discipline is revealed before our eyes, with almost tragic touch of author's own fate as "controversial"(for some) and plagiated scholar. And also a personal note: Gauleiter Kube, a much maligned Hitler's boss of Belorussia, got in Hillberg's magnum opus Destruction of European Jews some flesh and blood which made me understand better the Holocaust reality in my native land.

Hilberg's works are surely uneasy reading for those who perceive the Holocaust through a comforting model reduced to "... a more familiar picture of a struggle-- however unequal--between combatants" (p.135).

The language of the book is unusual and its laconism , though sometimes veiling the sense, is accompanied by inner dramatic beauty and power.

In general, Hilberg's memoir is a mind-nourishing and thought-provoking book, a must for anyone with an interest in history of the 20th century.