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The title "The Good Old Days" ("Schone Zeiten" in German) comes from the cover of a private photo album kept by concentration camp commandant Kurt Franz of Treblinka. This gruesomely sentimental and unmistakably authentic title introduces an disturbing collection of photographs, diaries, letters home, and confidential reports created by the executioners and sympathetic observers of the Holocaust. "The Good Old Days" reveals startling new evidence of the inhumanity of recent twentieth century history and is published now as yet another irrefutable response to the revisionist historians who claim to doubt the historic truth of the Holocaust.
Good Times, Bad Times: The Universality of Evil
| Customer Rating:   | This book provides a wealth of important, firsthand information on the Holocaust by those who were actually involved or viewed the involvement of others. I do not mean to quibble or lessen the impact of the horror that was done but the book does contain several flaws.
For example, the book does not put to rest the purported myth that people were not punished if they did not willingly participate in the killings. The testimony of a select dozen or so men (some of whose testimony was not obtained in the most enlightened of circumstances, i.e., after beatings, torture, and the threat of death) can hardly be considered representative of the experiences of the several hundred thousand who were involved, many of whom testified, even after being beaten to say otherwise, that there were severe punishments, including death, if they did not participate. Also, later on in the book the testimonies of other participants contradicts the testimonies of those who said they were not punished by stating that people were indeed punished if they did not participate in these, often gruesome, actions. Moreover, the statements of many of those who said there was no punishment when they did not participate is not wholly correct. Many of these people, after refusing to participate, were screamed at by their superior officer and called a coward in front of their fellow soldiers. Among the most humiliating things you can call a soldier, especially by a superior and in front of his comrades, is that he is being a coward in the line of duty. This, in itself, is a form of punishment that would likely haunt and affect these men as long as they remained with those who saw and heard what happened, whether they wanted to admit it or not.
For another thing, the testimony of Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, is invaluable for many reasons, including, that the reason all the dead bodies cannot, and never will be, found is that the Nazis went about digging up mass graves, pulverizing the remains, and scattering them to the four winds (or in the case of some Auschwitz victims, dumping the ashes into the Vistula River) to hide the evidence of their acts. But Hoess' testimony that there were 3 million victims at Auschwitz is suspect and most historians now reduce this amount by at least a third and some by almost two-thirds. In this regard, Hoess' testimony (which it is pretty much admitted now was obtained after torture) that up to 10,000 people a day were killed in Auschwitz makes no sense. He writes that 2,000 people were gassed at a time and would then be taken up to the crematorium where it would take 12 hours to finish burning them. This seems to put a limit of 4,000 people a day who could be killed and disposed of even if the crematoriums were running 24 hours a day. (Admittedly, there may have been Leichenkeller (cellars for the dead, or corpse cellars) at the camp, but still it seems to make no sense to stack up to 6,000 dead bodies a day and the Nazis would have rapidly run out of room, e.g., in just a week there would be a surplus of 42,000 dead bodies.) [I welcome any information from anyone on clarifying this.]
In addition, the book does not demonstrate the efficiency of the Nazis. On the contrary, it discloses the inefficiency and chaos that often accompanied these slaughters, including people having to be shot repeatedly and others surviving being shot and buried.
One of the most interesting, and revealing, parts of the book was a 12-page official letter of complaint by an SS lieutenant-colonel to the SS and police general in charge of anti-partisan activities in the Eastern occupied territories, von dem Bach (who, in return for his testimony against other Nazis, escaped execution for war crimes after the war), that the Nazi party district leader for White Russia (gauleiter Kube) was too soft on the Jews. This letter is must reading for anyone who wants to know what the mindset was of certain hardcore Nazis and SS members vis a vis the Jewish people.
Despite its flaws (including the book's title, which is a mistranslation, and the book's cover photo, which was taken at an unknown location of people who have never been identified), all in all the book is still a valuable addition to the history of World War II and an understanding of the Holocaust. |
a dificult read
| Customer Rating: | | This book is depressing and very difficult to read for very long. The benefit of the book is to get a first hand glimpse of the atrocities committed by those following Hitler in WWII. It outlines how savage people can become in their feelings toward a religion. |
Hard read. Well written/researched.
| Customer Rating: | When Hannah Arendt coined the phrase "banality of evil," she was writing about Eichmann.But after reading this compilation of personal stories,she could have been writing about anyone and everyone who bowed to worship hitler,and blithely went on about their lives,pre-war,when they knew full well what hitler and his monstrous henchmen and women were doing.
This is a hard read because it is infuriating.They knew what they were doing and didn't give a damn.True,there were observers who were initially shocked by the torture and murders they were seeing,but they just went away quietly,and did nothing to broadcast what was happening in Germany during the time the persecutions of the Jews was just beginning on a large scale.Pogroms were the forerunner of mass murder.
Reading this made me sick,but I felt I owed it to the legions of the dead and suffering.
There really isn't much else to say about this book. It is meticulously researched and presented in a straight-forward manner.Neither of which makes it any easier to read.But read it. It needs to be read,and you will be stronger for it. |
Yes, evil IS banal.
| Customer Rating: | To truly appreciate how ordinary people could commit such evil acts as were committed in the Holoucast, we would do well to remember that none of those who tortured and murdered in the concentration camps were any different than you or I.
They had families. They managed to reduce the importance of their victims as human beings.
There is a parallel between what happened in Nazi concentration camps and what is happening now to innocent people incarcerated and dehumanized in Iraq and elsewhere.
As someone once said, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." |
A Difficult Read, But Necessary to Understand the Holocaust
| Customer Rating: | The most jarring aspect of this book is the casual, flippant remarks that are made about mass-extermination. Some of the German quotes in this book were taken from diaries and letters to loved ones, and much of it is casual. There is a convenient language spoken. For instance, few people say that they were "killing Jews." The most common phrase was, "special actions."
There are dry reports of incidents written by SS men that could be interchanged with a unemotional report of wheat production on any farm. Only, these reports are about numbers of Jews murdered, or bodies liquidated.
It is the casual nature of these comments that makes this book so surprising. It's all so "matter-of-fact." It's all so horrifyingly mundane.
I bought this as a compliment to other books I own about the Holocaust, and few books have matched the surreality of the Nazi "Final Solution" than this book. It is highly recommended, but only for those who want to see the atrocities described from the cold, heartless eyes of the Nazi murderers themselves. |
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