Final Solution

The Holocaust has never been so widely commemorated, but our understanding of the accepted narrative has rarely, if ever, been questioned.

David Cesarani's sweeping reappraisal challenges accepted explanations for the anti-Jewish politics of Nazi Germany and the inevitability of the 'Final Solution'. The persecution of the Jews was not always the Nazis' central preoccupation, nor was it an inevitable process. Cesarani also reveals that in German-occupied countries it unfolded erratically, often due to local initiatives. Ghettos were improvised while the mass shooting of Jews during the invasion of Russia owed as much to the security situation as to anti-semitism.

In this new interpretation, war is critical to the Jewish fate. Military failure denied the Germans opportunities to expel Jews into a distant territory and created a crisis of resources that led to starvation of the ghettos and intensified anti-Jewish measures. It was global war that eventually triggered genocide in Europe.

Cesarani disputes the iconic role of railways, deportation trains and even Auschwitz, and reveals that plunder was more a cause of anti-Jewish feeling than a consequence of it. Using diaries and reports written in ghettos and camps, he exposes the extent of sexual violence and abuse of Jewish women by the Germans, their collaborators and, shockingly, by Jews themselves. But Cesarani also reveals the courage and ingenuity of those who struggled to evade capture and fought back wherever they could. And unlike previous histories, he follows the Jews' journey to the 'Displaced Persons' camps; camps which have so often been merely a footnote in the story but where Jews languished behind barbed wire for years after 'liberation'.

This moving and dramatic account captures the fate of the Jews, the horror and the heroism, in their own words. Resting on decades of scholarship it is compelling, authoritative, and profoundly disturbing.

David Cesarani is internationally recognized as one of this generation's leading Jewish and Holocaust scholars. He is research professor in History at Royal Holloway. His most recent book, Major Farran's Hat (Heinemann, 2009), was nominated for a Golden Dagger and was a finalist for the US National Jewish Book Award for History 2009. His biography of Adolf Eichmann was winner of the National Jewish Book Award in 2006 and has been translated into a dozen languages. Earlier books include an acclaimed biography of Arthur Koestler (1998) and the controversial Justice Delayed (1992), the story of how Britain became a haven for Nazi war criminals after the end of the war. He has extensive broadcasting and print media experience. In 2005 he was awarded an OBE for his work in the establishment of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK and is a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. He also serves on the UK delegation to the International Task Force for Holocaust Remembrance, Education and Research.