The terrible secret

Laqueur's new introduction, written for this paperback edition of his classic work, revives the lesson of the Holocaust and broadens our understanding of one of history's most terrible crimes. Despite the outrage that swept the world when the Nazi death camps were first liberated in 1945, the truth about the extermination of European Jewry had been an open secret since at least 1941. Using sources and documentaries only recently made available, Walter Laqueur examines when and how information about the genocide became known to millions of Germans, international Jewish organizations, leaders of Jewish communities throughout Europe, and top government officials in neutral and Allied countries. Laying bare the lethal combination of disbelief and indifference that met this news, The Terrible Secret offers a brilliant and chilling demonstration of paralysis in the face of ultimate evil.