Liberation of the Camps, The: The End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath

- Blurb -

The full history on the end of the Nazi camp system and the momentous changes that painful process brought with it, published for the 70th anniversary, from one of the foremost scholars in the field. The horror revealed by the liberation of the Nazi death camps in 1945 was, to most of the world, unimaginable. The scale of the atrocity and the complexities of handling a huge and traumatized population severely tested the services and structures put in place to help them. In this deeply researched and moving book, Dan Stone shifts the emphasis much more onto the victims themselves - not just the well documented survivor guilt and trauma, and neither the coming to terms and rebuilding over subsequent years and decades. He looks closely at the moment of liberation and the immediate aftermath, emphasizing the very mixed feelings: exhaustion, fear, shame and devastation, often at being the sole surviving family member, as well as the relief, determination and hope that accompanied the actual train of events in individual camps.Weaving together the stories of the liberators and the liberated, Nazi perpetrators and local populations, charities and government agencies, Stone examines the whole trajectory of liberation in all its complexity He reveals the many ways that victims set about helping themselves respond to their ordeals and adjust to new lives, from art and theatre to reprisals and revenge.