This volume, highlighting the years 1941 to 1942, when the trajectory of genocide escalated from pogroms to mass shootings and then to gas chambers, covers not only Europe but also areas around the globe threatened by the Nazis. Embedded in an excellent narrative, the carefully selected documents help us see the Holocaust through the eyes of its victims as they depict a broad range of responses from elite to ordinary Jews, from organizations to individuals. As Jews try to understand what was happening around them, their voices cry out in confusion, in disbelief, in agony. -- Marion Kaplan, New York University This third volume in the Jewish Responses to Persecution series is a tremendous work of documentation and scholarship. It offers a starkly different perspective on the beginning of Nazi mass-killing operations in 1941 and 1942. Unlike other documentary collections and works of scholarship, which focus on the Nazi decision-making process and the expansion of killing operations, this work reveals what mass murder meant and how it was perceived by the Jewish men, women, and children facing death and by Jews in a variety of situations around the globe. Readers of this volume will substantially deepen and even rethink their prior understandings of a range of topics relating to the unfolding genocide of European Jews. -- Alexandra Garbarini, Williams College
