A brilliant, haunting, and profoundly original portrait of the
defining tragedy of our time.
In
this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder
presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth
century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first.
Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies
from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of
the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible
than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying.
The
Holocaust began in a dark but accessible place, in Hitler's mind,
with the thought that the elimination of Jews would restore balance
to the planet and allow Germans to win the resources they desperately
needed. Such a worldview could be realized only if Germany destroyed
other states, so Hitler's aim was a colonial war in Europe itself. In
the zones of statelessness, almost all Jews died. A few people, the
righteous few, aided them, without support from institutions. Much of
the new research in this book is devoted to understanding these
extraordinary individuals. The almost insurmountable difficulties
they faced only confirm the dangers of state destruction and
ecological panic. These men and women should be emulated, but in
similar circumstances few of us would do so.
By
overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have
misunderstood modernity and endangered the future. The early
twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as
growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological
challenges to global order. Our world is closer to Hitler's than we
like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it
was -- and ourselves as we are.
Groundbreaking,
authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a
Holocaust that is not only history but warning.