Böcker av Wendy Lower

A single photograph—an exceptionally rare “action shot” documenting the horrific murder of a Jewish family—drives a riveting forensic investigation by a gifted Holocaust scholar. In 2009, the acclaimed author of Hitler’s Furies was shown a photograph just brought to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The documentation of the Holocaust is vast, but there are virtually no images of a Jewish family at the actual moment of murder, in this case by German officials and Ukrainian collaborators. A Ukrainian shooter’s rifle is inches from a woman’s head, obscured in a cloud of smoke. The woman is bending forward, holding the hand of a barefoot boy. And—only one of the shocking revelations of Wendy Lower’s brilliant ten-year investigation of this image—the photograph reveals the shins of another child, slipping from the woman’s lap.  Wendy Lower’s gripping detective work—in Ukraine, Germany, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States—recovers astonishing layers of detail concerning the open-air massacres in Ukraine. The identities of the victims, of the killers—and, remarkably, of the photographer who openly took the picture, as a secret act of resistance—are dramatically uncovered. Finally, in the hands of this exceptional scholar, a single image unlocks a new understanding of the place of the family unit in the history and aftermath of Nazi genocide.

A book about a terrible photograph from the Holocaust - an exceptionally rare image documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family in Ukraine,

Winner, 2022 National Jewish Book AwardShortlist, 2022 Wingate Literary PrizeA single photograph—an exceptionally rare “action shot” documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family—drives a riveting process of discovery for a gifted Holocaust scholarIn 2009, the acclaimed author of Hitler’s Furies was shown a photograph just brought to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The documentation of the Holocaust is vast, but there are virtually no images of a Jewish family at the actual moment of murder, in this case by German officials and Ukrainian collaborators. A Ukrainian shooter’s rifle is inches from a woman''s head, obscured in a cloud of smoke. She is bending forward, holding the hand of a barefooted little boy. And—only one of the shocking revelations of Wendy Lower’s brilliant ten-year investigation of this image—the shins of another child, slipping from the woman’s lap.Wendy Lower’s forensic and archival detective work—in Ukraine, Germany, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States—recovers astonishing layers of detail concerning the open-air massacres in Ukraine. The identities of mother and children, of the killers—and, remarkably, of the Slovakian photographer who openly took the image, as a secret act of resistance—are dramatically uncovered. Finally, in the hands of this brilliant exceptional scholar, a single image unlocks a new understanding of the place of the family unit in the ideology of Nazi genocide.    

Focusing on the Zhytomyr region and weaving together official German war-time records, diaries, memoirs, and personal interviews, this work provides an assessment of German colonization and the Holocaust in Ukraine. It shifts attention from Germany itself to the eastern outposts of the Reich, where the regime truly revealed its core beliefs.

This in-depth study of a Jewish man's diary from Nazi-occupied Poland provides an unfiltered view of the struggles of Samuel Golfard, who tried to make sense of and resist the Holocaust that ultimately destroyed him. The diary is complemented by an array of wartime and postwar photographs, newspaper articles, documents, and testimonies that create a fuller picture of Jewish resistance and the perpetration of mass murder in eastern Galicia.

A shocking and timely reminder of the role Nazi women played in the Holocaust, not only as plunderers and direct witnesses, but on the Eastern Front. History has it that the role of women in Nazi Germany was to be the perfect Hausfrau and a loyal cheerleader for the Fuhrer.