On The Bookshelf
ESTHER ALLWEISS TSCHIRHART
Copy Editor
om HaShoah, Holocaust
Remembrance Day, falls on
Tuesday, April 13 (Nisan
27). If we are never to for-
get the Holocaust, we must learn
about it, and there is no better way to
gain a depth of understanding of the
Shoah than to read about its many
aspects. We hope this roundup of
recent books will guide you.
key to Hitler's pathology in his rela-
tionship with his father, Alois, whom
he hated. Victor also provides an
analysis of Hitler's plans for the direc-
tion of the war. His decisions leading
to Germany's defeat were not blunders
but calculated risks he took to carry
out his first priority — the Final
Solution. During the
war, writes
Victor,
Hitler
troops to remilitarize the Rhineland in
1936. During this period Hitler rose to
the dictatorship of a country that
embraced his leadership. Rather than
discuss psychological or psychosexual
theories about Hitler's personality,
Kershaw's aim is to explore the nature
and development of Hitler's power.
• Described as
"the first
biog-
Living In
Nazi Germany
• A historian whose parents
escaped Nazi Germany has
written an account of the
daily existence of Jews of
that period in Between
Dignity and Despair:
Jewish Life in Nazi
Germany (Oxford
University Press;
$30). Marion A.
Kaplan, a professor
at Queens College
and the Graduate
Center of City
College of New
York, draws upon
letters, diaries,
memoirs and
interviews to illus-
trate the
Holocaust's begin-
nings as seen by
women who experi-
enced its humilia-
tions. The book
recently won a
National Jewish Book
Award from the Jewish
Book Council and took the
Fraenkel Prize in
Contemporary History from
the Wiener Library in London.
Historians and survivors offer a variety
of perspectives on the Shoah.
• In Hitler: The Pathology of Evil
(Brassey's; $24.95), psychotherapist-
author George Victor, Ph.D., finds the
• The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI,
by Georges Passelcq and Bernard
Suchecky (Harcourt Brace & Co.;
$14), explores the encyclical con-
demning Hitler's racist policies that
Pope Pius XI directed an American
priest named John LaFarge to write in
the summer of 1938. When Pope Pius
XI died in early 1939, his successor,
Pius XII, remained silent as Nazi
Germany was carrying out its "Final
Solution." Jesuit seminarian Thomas
Breslin uncovered the manuscript
in the late 1960s from the
Catholic Church's Vatican
archive. It is published here
for the first time, along
with an account of the
painstaking investiga-
tion by Passelcq, a
Benedictine monk,
and Suchecky, the
holder of doctorate
in history, with a
specialization in
Jewish studies.
Behind
The War
'um etebeittb.
..ribs'
Specifically Hitler
• Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's
Apprenticeship, by Brigitte Hamann,
Ph.D. (Oxford University Press; $35)
is at once a biography of Adolf Hitler
during his formative years and a cul-
tural and social history of early 20th-
century Vienna. Hamann, an expert
in 19th-and 20th-century history,
sheds new light on the profound influ-
ence Austro-Hungary's capital held
over the life of one of the most
destructive characters in history.
The Church And
The Holocaust
Louis 2ant,01 Brodtoky
had a
717
PMPARRRIM5P""W"-
--
--,
super-
secret plan to
surreptitiously sterilize
all Germans who carried "one drop of
Jewish blood."
• Hider, 1889-1936: Hubris (WW.
Norton & Co.; $35) is author Ian
Kershaw's attempt to explain the Fuhrer's
incredible attraction for Germany.
Kershaw, a professor of history at the
University of Sheffield in England, gives
an account of Hitler's life from his birth
in 1889 up to the order he gave German
raphy to
draw upon
Hitler's medical
records," Hitler: Diagnosis of a
Destructive Prophet, by Fritz
Redlich, M.D. (Oxford University
Press; $35), provides a "wealth of
insights into Hitler's character."
Redlich, a Vienna-born Jew, uses his
training as a neurologist and practic-
ing psychiatrist and Hitler's actual
records to show how Hitler's physical
and mental health influenced his
beliefs and behavior.
• Richard
Breitman, a pro-
fessor of history at
Amencan
University, has
written a major
new assessment of
the early Nazi plans
to kill Jews during
World War II in his
book Official Secrets:
What the British and
Americans Knew (Hill &
Wang; $25). This work
examines three questions: Was
the Nazi strategy to eliminate the
Jews of Europe a response to the
pressures of war or a deliberate long-
term policy of racial ideology? To what
extent did ordinary Germans join or
condone the genocide? And just how
much did the political leaders of the
United States and Britain know of the
wholesale murder as it was actually
perpetrated? Breitman assesses the
British and American suppression of
information about the Nazi killings
and the tensions between the two
powers over how to respond.
Re gees In Asia
• In Japanese Diplomats and Jewish
Refugees: A World War II Dilemma
(Praeger Publishers; $39.95), Pamela