Arguing that genocide was not a preconceived plan but rather a discovered possibility, Christopher Browning explains how Hitler's decision to murder the Jews en masse emerged in stages and by a process of elimination that gradually foreclosed plans for their expulsion from Europe. Only in the interval between late September and late October 1941 did the desire to "remove" the Jews intersect with the discovery of acceptable means of killing them on...

This text answers two fundamental questions about the Holocaust. How, and why, did it happen? Laurence Rees's answer, based on the latest academic research and 25 years of exploring the subject, reveals three themes. First, it was not just about the Jews - the Nazis would have murdered many more non-Jews - and it was not just about Germans. Second, there was no single 'decision' to start the Holocaust - there was a series of escalations, most often...

When Henry Orenstein and his siblings end up in a series of concentrations camps, Orenstein's bravery and quick thinking help him to save himself and his brothers from execution by playing a role in the greatest hoax ever pulled on the upper echelons of Nazi command. Orenstein's lucid prose recreates this horrific time in history and his constant struggle for survival as the Nazis move him and his brothers through five concentration camps. His description...

Renia is a young girl who dreams of becoming a poet. But Renia is Jewish, she lives in Poland and the year is 1939.

Would you sacrifice yourself to save thousands of others? In the Summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground operative called Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interred at a new concentration camp on the border of the Reich. His mission was to report on Nazi crimes and raise a secret army to stage an uprising. The name of the detention centre -- Auschwitz. It was only after arriving...