Oric Books

This book is very informative and educational. It is full of pictures and easy reading to describe such a horrific event in history. This is a great teacher tool!

I was pleasantly surprised - while beeing shocked and horrified - that this book was NOT just a "coffee table book" of pictures from the US Holocaust Museum and Memorial - not that one would want a coffee-table book on that topic anyway. That it was published by/with the museum may give the impression it's "just" a bunch of pictures - a printed tour through the museum. That is definitely not the case.

The book tells more through the well-written text than it does through the pictures. The book would be excellent with no pictures at all - it's that well-written & edited. The pictures alone would give an "eh, so what?" reaction. Together, they are a riveting and frightening story of this terrible period in our history.

I thought I knew something about the Holocaust - and I suppose I did know as much as some people know - possibly more than most. This book opened my eyes even further.

Though I know antisemitism is unfortunately, still alive and well today - even in the United States - I had no idea how powerful it was in the years leading to World War II. This played a terrible role in the systematic destruction of the Jewish people - not only by the Nazis - but also through the cold-hearted or apathetic at best response by the rest of the world. Though most of us can show clean hands when it comes to the hands-on role of actual killing, an awful lot of us still tolerate - or even worse, practice the very kind of antisemitism that fueled the premeditated killing of so many.

This book could easily be an entire course on the Holocaust - from the earliest beginnings and history of anti-jewish action in the world, through the actual event, and up until today.

If I could afford it, I'd buy copies of this book for a couple of holocaust rejectors. If the evidence it presents does not cause them to renounce their denial of this event, then perhaps a coupl of well-placed whacks to the head will do. Either way, this book is weighty enough to accomplish the task.

Kidding aside, this is a great book - on a terrible subject.

Michael Berenbaum is a renowned scholar and author of several books and professional articles about the Holocaust that took place during the Second World War. In 1993 Berenbaum, together with The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., published the first edition of The World Must Know, and twelve years later an updated second edition came out.

Filled to the brim with pictures taken before, during, and after the Holocaust, this book is most definitely a very frightening piece of evidence; detailing the nasty ability of the human race of demonstrating a total lack of sympathy towards dissidents, and in many different ways this book offers both a relentless and necessary insight into the unfathomable mass murder, during which millions of Jews perished; young, old, men, women, and children. But not only Jews; gypsies, the handicapped, homosexuals, political prisoners, and many more were systematically killed as well.

So in other words, an important book about one of the darkest chapters in the history of the human race.

But it's also a book that, unfortunately, turned out to be a huge disappointment.

More than anything else, The World Must Know is one-sided beyond belief. Of course the main focus of a book such as this one should be, and is, the unbelievable suffering of the victims together with the origins and consequences of Nazi politics. But, no matter how despicable these crimes were, one must always keep in mind that the ones doing these crimes were other people, not machines nor wild animals, more often than not simple ordinary people who before the war had been your everyday German citizen.

However, throughout the book these perpetrators are depicted as otherworldly monsters, and even though no one can blame the victims and the rest of the world for thinking this way, it's still important to remember that to the perpetrators themselves, what they did was completely justified, of utmost importance, and not necessarily evil at all.

So why does this bother me? Well, no crime or injustice, no matter how extreme or massive, can be fully understood - and thus prevented from ever happening again - as long as only one side of the grisly story is told, and since The World Must Know focuses the way it does, the reader never gets a complete, or at least more extensive, understanding of what it was that actually happened. One of the reasons why this book was even written in the first place was, after all, to ensure that a Holocaust II never takes place. It's a noble quest indeed, but how is a crime ever to be prevented from happening again unless you have sufficient information about the ones who actually were willing to carry out the crime in question?

With this in mind, it's equally surprising why only a few lines of text, at the very end of the book, mention those who choose to deny or downplay the Holocaust. For a book as crucially important as The World Must Know, neglects like the ones just mentioned are, well, unacceptable.

And to make matters worse, the book doesn't have any kind of map and/or direction useful to anyone who'd want to visit the few concentration camps from the Second World War that still exist today. And that sucks, because I honestly believe that one must actually visit the sites if one wants to get some sort of genuine understanding of what happened there. Not only that, the book is quite heavy and cumbersome and from time to time written in an annoyingly repetitive way.

So in the end, what could have been an incredible - and mentally demanding - experience turns out to be mediocre and full of shortcomings.

With the ranks of survivors getting smaller for each year that passes, this book, shows us that we must never forget the atrocities that were commited towards humanity (Jews, Gypsies, Russian POW's and many others). The pictures that portray the holocaust are difficult to watch and the pictures of the shoes is a horrific reminder that these were once worn by people that hopes,dreams and aspirations for the future. The picture of the gypsy children is horrendous and it shows that the world must never ever forget the horrific acts that happened.

Why the need for a second edition of a classic Jewish studies survey of images from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC? Because with each decade that passes it becomes more important to preserve the images and realities of World War II events for future generations - and because THE WORLD MUST KNOW is an outstandingly well organized gathering of hard-hitting images from the German Holocaust. The Museum is a living memorial to the events and those who died - and THE WORLD MUST KNOW: THE HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST AS TOLD IN THE U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM is an outstanding memorial propelling its images beyond museum walls.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

`After the Fall', becomes a reminder for the rest of the world of the Srebrenica massacre and ethnic cleansing. The Bosnian Holocaust, one of the most barbarous examples of genocide in Europe since the end of World War II, will never be forgotten. This is an extraordinary documentary work that will keep its significance for years to come. Nothing more to say but THANK YOU PATRICK MCCARTHY for the wonderful book.

This is a powerful and moving portrait of the brutality of war and of the victimization of the Bosnian Muslims who were far less nationalistic than either the Bosnian Croats or the Bosnian Serbs. What is missing is an homest account of the exploits of Nasir Oric who was the leader of the Muslim forces in Srebrenica when it was a "safe area" before August 1995. In a two year period before the Serbs committed their horrible atrocity, Muslim forces under U.N. cover launched many attacks against Serbian civilians in the villages surrounding Srebrenica. Oric and his forces, and with help from Mujahedeen volunteers and the early version of Al Queda, sometimes killed their hapless Serbian victims in ritual Islamic beheadings. Oric often videotaped these events and showed them in Srebrenica bars as entertainment. The crimes of the Serbs can never be relativized but a more complete picture of events is needed if the cycle of violence is to end. Nasir Oric is now at the Hague and only since his arrest have the Serbs started to come to terms and admit their criminal acts in Srebrenica. Despite its powerful message, this book unfortunately glosses over the role of Oric and his followers in their killing of over 2,000 Bosnian Serbs. But still, if anyone should read this book it should be Serbians who still might cling to the blind notion that Srebrenica was a creation of Muslim propaganda. The testimony of the survivors is a wake up call to those who think that the politics of obsessive ethnic identification can be pursued without dire consequences.

I agree with the other reviewers that this is powerful and important book. I recently had a chance to hear Patrick McCarthy speak and found out that all of the proceeds from this book will go to the Oric family. A worthwhile purchase.

After The Fall: Srebrenica Survivors In St. Louis is an outstanding photodocumentary that combines the informative text of Patrick McCarthy with the impressive documentary photography of Tom Maday to present the genocidal tragedy of the Bosnia-Herzegovina city of Srebrenica and its effects on the lives of one extended family in St. Louis, Missouri. In July 1995, more than 7,500 Bosnians from the city of Srebrenica were massacred by troops of the Bosnian Serb Army. Another 30,000 women and children were forcibly removed from their homes in this United Nations-declared "safe area". The siege of Srebrenica represented the greatest atrocity witnessed in Europe since the days of the Nazi holocaust, yet it was only one episode in a larger war of extermination against the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1990s. Some 20,000 Bosnian refugees (approximately 500 of them survivors of Srebrenica) came to settle in St. Louis. After The Fall is a superbly presented, highly recommended memorial, testament, and account of this horrific tragedy that these St. Louis based refugees must come to grips with as represented in the lives, statements, and images of one such extended family.

By way of introduction, I would like to say that this is an extraordinarily well-written book that divulges the gruesome atrocities that took place in my hometown. Srebrenica, a so called UN "SAFE AREA", was under the constant attack of the Serbian army, during the Bosnian war. UN's primary task was to protect civilians from Serbian soldiers but they failed. Innocent Bosnian civilians were betrayed by the International community and left for dead. UN officials and others in charge appeared to be indifferent to the immense suffering of the Bosnian people. As is well-known, one of the worst massacres after the World War 2 took place in Srebrenica. In my view, the international community must be held accountable for these heinous deeds. UN's indifference and passivity cost at least 10.000 innocent lives! This is extremely unjust and it makes me enraged and bewildered! This is truly a splendid book that I highly recommend to all people who want to gain an insight into horrendous plights of Bosnian people!