As I was having trouble sleeping last night, I listened to a podcast I had downloaded on my mp3 player. It dealt with a new book in French, Dictionnaire de la Shoah.
This dictionary was published last April and supervised by four historians: Georges Bensoussan a French authority on the subject, Jean-Marc Dreyfus who lectures in Manchester, Edouard Husson – a specialist of Nazi Germany – and Joël Kotek who teaches at the Free University of Brussels.
The idea behind this dictionary was to help the people who are interested in knowing more about the Holocaust to find their way through the vast array of books which have been printed on this topic. Thus Bensoussan reckons that a dozen books are published each month on the subject in the USA, Israel, France and Germany alone. Similarly as many as 2,200 books deal with Auschwitz.
The historians who contributed also wished to emphasize the specificity of the Shoah in a world where relativism is politically correct. Bensoussan reminds us that in no other genocide were old people, children and adults alike brought in trains from the four quarters of a continent to be murdered in gas chambers.
As this dictionary sounded both interesting and essential for a Jewish teacher, I went to the local bookstore and was lucky to find it. It contains an introduction, a detailed timeline, some maps, a bibligraphy and 420 entries which constitute the core of the book.
I am sorry that the links I provided and the book are in French but I found tha,t because of its topic and quality, it was worth a blog post.
12 Comments
July 8, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Now that’s interesting. I had no idea so many books were published so frequently.
I may see if I can buy it myself. I can read French better than I speak it, that’s for sure!
July 8, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Rachel: You can buy it from amazon.fr. I often buy on amazon.co.uk and shipping is not extravagant; I guess it is the same if you buy on the French website from England.
July 8, 2009 at 10:28 pm
I didn’t know you could do that! Oh dear…..
July 8, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I can’t read French. I hope this book is eventually translated into English.
July 8, 2009 at 4:46 pm
jewishes: Anything by Bensoussan is worth reading but unfortunately his books haven’t been translated into English, or so it seems. I also attended 2 lectures he gave and he was incredible.
July 8, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Very interesting.
I wonder where the picture on the book cover is from?
July 8, 2009 at 8:29 pm
It is a photo of Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 1944.
July 8, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Thanks for the information.
July 9, 2009 at 1:33 am
I especially appreciated this:
“The historians who contributed also wished to emphasize the specificity of the Shoah in a world where relativism is politically correct. Bensoussan reminds us that in no other genocide were old people, children and adults alike brought in trains from the four quarters of a continent to be murdered in gas chambers.”
July 9, 2009 at 9:43 am
It is also something that really struck me. That’s why I wrote it here.
July 10, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Holocaust allusions get thrown around too much in modern politics. For the wrong reasons.
July 9, 2009 at 9:42 am
Rachel: You can order from any of Amazon’s websites. You don’t even need to enter your details again. They just ask you for your password and draw the rest from you account.