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Can any textbook--by its nature a synthesis of disparate events, materials, and perspectives--give students a sense of the depth and emotions of the Holocaust? Works such as Doris Bergen's War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003) and David Engel's The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews (Harlow: Langman, 2000), though intellectually sophisticated, are short, focused, and painted in broad strokes. One can use them in a course along with primary sources, literary works, and monographs. In his handsome textbook adorned with numerous photographs, David M. Crowe produces a much more detailed narrative covering perpetrators, victims, rescuers, and some bystanders. It has some strengths, but too many weaknesses in its current form.
At the outset Crowe maintains that a broad overview of Jewish history is necessary, because some students lack exposure to it and might otherwise see Jews only as victims. Compression of several thousand years of Jewish history into less than eighty pages, however, would challenge any single author, especially one who is not a specialist. Accepting the Exodus story as history, Crowe suggests that Egypt originally was a land of opportunity for the Hebrews (p. 7). My colleagues tell me that there is no evidence for this conclusion. Alexander the Great conquered Judea, not Palestine (p. 9). Some problematic statements are...