The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and Its Aftermath - Tapa dura

'The real power of Stone's history lies in a sense in of indomitable vigour and self-belief... Stone does a good job of showing how even as nations declared peace, individuals and families still had to fight on desperately.'-Sinclair Mckay, the Daily Telegraph. -- Sinclair Mckay The Daily Telegraph '...a thoughtful, sensitive and well-researched treatment of an important and rarely covered subject.'-Rodger Moorhouse, BBC History Magazine. -- Roger Moorhouse BBC History Magazine "[An] engrossing and illuminating book-the first full and comparative study of the subject."-Richard J. Evans, New York Review of Books -- Richard J. Evans New York Review of Books "In recent years, Dan Stone's name has been a guarantee of quality... A clear step in the right direction, it focuses on the centre-piece of western Holocaust memory - the moment when the American and British armies, in April 1945, made the shocking discovery of the concentration camps in Germany."-Jan Lanicek, History -- Jan Lanicek History

A moving, deeply researched account of survivors' experiences of liberation from Nazi death camps and the long, difficult years that followed Seventy years have passed since the tortured inmates of Hitler's concentration and extermination camps were liberated. When the horror of the atrocities came fully to light, it was easy for others to imagine the joyful relief of freed prisoners. Yet for those who had survived the unimaginable, the experience of liberation was a slow, grueling journey back to life. In this unprecedented inquiry into the days, months, and years following the arrival of Allied forces at the Nazi camps, a foremost historian of the Holocaust draws on archival sources and especially on eyewitness testimonies to reveal the complex challenges liberated victims faced and the daunting tasks their liberators undertook to help them reclaim their shattered lives. Historian Dan Stone focuses on the survivors-their feelings of guilt, exhaustion, fear, shame for having survived, and devastating grief for lost family members; their immense medical problems; and their later demands to be released from Displaced Persons camps and resettled in countries of their own choosing. Stone also tracks the efforts of British, American, Canadian, and Russian liberators as they contended with survivors' immediate needs, then grappled with longer-term issues that shaped the postwar world and ushered in the first chill of the Cold War years ahead.