Get email notification for articles from Ruth Schuster
Follow
It is known as the Holocaust. Jews call it the “
Shoah” – an ancient word for disaster” or “catastrophe. The mass, industrialized murder of European Jewry, the culmination of centuries of hate in an explosion of unimaginable brutality, left nearly six million Jews dead. Not killed in battle or even casualties of war but put to death, often in factories built expressly for murder.
Since the gruesome discoveries of just how Nazi Germany set about eradicating Europe s Jews, aided and abetted by anti-Semitic or just cowed populations, mankind has struggled to understand what happened. And to answer the ultimate question – could it happen again? The subject is exhaustively covered in media, literature – and cinema, too, where some set out to document, some to investigate and some even, finally, to riff. Directors wonder, dabble in alternate realities and ask: What if? And then what if?
It is known as the Holocaust. Jews call it the “
Shoah” – an ancient word for disaster” or “catastrophe. The mass, industrialized murder of European Jewry, the culmination of centuries of hate in an explosion of unimaginable brutality, left nearly six million Jews dead. Not killed in battle or even casualties of war but put to death, often in factories built expressly for murder.
Since the gruesome discoveries of just how Nazi Germany set about eradicating Europe s Jews, aided and abetted by anti-Semitic or just cowed populations, mankind has struggled to understand what happened. And to answer the ultimate question – could it happen again? The subject is exhaustively covered in media, literature – and cinema, too, where some set out to document, some to investigate and some even, finally, to riff. Directors wonder, dabble in alternate realities and ask: What if? And then what if?