Anne Frank and After - Dutch Holocaust Literature in Historical Perspective

Two out of every three European Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. In Holland as many as three Jews out of every four did not survive. The American philosopher Hannah Arendt has called the destruction of Dutch Jewry a catastrophe unparalleled in any western country. Van Galen Last and Wolfswinkel attempt in this book to comprehend the individual voices of some Dutch Jews (in their diaries, memoirs, novels) in view of the ever more frightening sequence of anti-Jewish measures being perpetrated by the Nazis. The reader becomes acquainted not only with Anne Frank, but also with other young Dutch Jews who wrote as acutely of their extreme experiences, like Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi. The result is a series of very compelling personal accounts of the Holocaust set in a historical perspective.