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SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News

and took part in this would not be willing
to speak, and I guess that's why people
never asked them very much. I found a
very strong willingness to speak and even
divulge things that were not very flattering
to them.
"It doesn't surprise me that Germans did
know [about the Holocaust]. That they
would admit that to me was surprising."
Johnson originally came to Germany on a
Fulbright Fellowship as a visiting professor
at the University of Cologne. He intended
to research ordinary justice in Nazi
Germany, but changed his focus as he
gained information. Neither Jewish nor
German, the author traces his interest in
Nazi terror to conversations with his father,
who had been an American prisoner of war
in Austria and Germany.
Before beginning his interviews, Johnson
researched in Gestapo and justice archives in

tic Johnson, conducting the last
interview in Germany for his
book Nazi Terror: The Gestapo,
Jews and Ordinary Citizens (Basic
Books; $35), sat in the living room of an
88-year-old resident of Cologne.
The man had dressed up for the occasion
and served red wine in a crystal glass while
recalling his experience as a World War II
policeman in a small town and as a guard at
Dachau. He explained that he had eluded
post-war prosecution by the Allies with an
altered identity card.
The author's host remembered an after-
noon when his detachment of six men shot
300 Jewish women and children and then
waded among the bodies in a ditch to
administer life-taking final shots if still nec-
essary.
"Three times he stood up from his
couch and walked over to me," Johnson
writes about the interview in his book.
"Each time he bent down to point to
the middle of his right calf muscle to
demonstrate how deep the blood had
been. Over and over again, he repeated,
`Can you imagine? Can you imagine?
Can you imagine?'"
Johnson, a history professor at
Central Michigan University, was able
to imagine. Unfortunately, it's one of
many stories he's unable to forget.
Jewish businessmen march through the streets of
Johnson's book, joining a group that Leipzig (date uncertain). The placards proclaim:
analyzes the Holocaust responsibilities
"Don't Buy from Jews! Shop in German Stores."
of German citizens who were not Nazi
targets themselves, took 11 years of research
three German cities — Cologne, Krefeld
and writing to complete. Besides poring over and Bergheim — and concentrated on these
documents that recount court cases, Johnson areas. He believes his evidence distinguishes
surveyed and interviewed both non-Jewish
his book from others with similar themes.
Germans and survivors, the latter scattered
"I think I sifted through more cases of
sometimes to other countries.
the Gestapo and how they treated Jews and
"The individual story is sometimes more
the rest of the German population during
powerful than adding it all up together, and
the Nazi period than anybody else has been
that's what I tried to capture in the book,"
able to do," says Johnson, whose past studies
says Johnson, a specialist in German history.
have involved German law and criminality
"I was surprised that people would talk to
in earlier time periods.
me and talk so candidly.
"I have surveyed thousands of people
"People have expected that average
although I only include a few hundred in
Germans who lived in the Third Reich
SILENT PARTNERS on page 96

"The Holocaust Chronicle" Bringing
Bring s "the truth
of the Holocaust to as many people as possible."

`The Holocaust
Chronicle'

Silvery morning at Claremont McKenna
Mil College, philosophy professor John Roth
looks at a photograph he has placed in his sight
line on his office wall.
The image is of commemorative stone slabs at
the site of what was the Treblinka, Poland, exter-
mination camp. The slabs mark the path of the
rail line that carried 850,000 Jews to their deaths.
"I view this picture as a reminder," Roth says.
"The reminder tens me: Never forget, take nothing
good for granted, teach and write to encourage the
possibility that genocide will not go on and on."
Roth is part of a team of scholars who wrote
The Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and
Pictures, published last month. A hardcover of
more than 750 pages, the oversized book uses
authoritative, approachable text, more than
2,000 arresting photographs and a remarkable
timeline of events to trace the Nazi extermina-
tion of 6 million Jews during World War II.
The book is the brainchild of its publisher,
Louis Weber, chief executive officer of Chicago-
based Publications International, Ltd. The son of
Polish Jews who settled in America in the 1920s,
Weber says he conceived The Holocaust Chronicle
to "give something back to the Jewish community,
and to bring the truth of the Holocaust to as many
people as possible."
Weber said he recalls growing up in the
1940s in a predominantly Jewish section of
Chicago's West Side and being puzzled by

CHRONICLE on page 97

4/28

2000

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