Juris Prudent Book

This moving and fascinating book describes the fourteen day journey of historian Sir Martin Gilbert and a group of his students of the holocaust , exploring sites associated with Jewish history both before and during the Second World War.

The group moves through France and Belgium and then on through Germany , onto Berlin , where at Wannsee plans where made , in 1942 , for the anihilation of Euope's 11 million Jews.
Moving south and then east the group moves on to the sites where the diabolical 'Final Solution' was actually put into practise - the death camps themselves - Auschwitz , Chelmno , Belzec , Majadanek , Sobibor and Teblinkla.

Gilbert fills this volume with both horrifying eyewitness accounts and details with his own phenomenal knowledge of Jewish and holocaust history , in this geographic pilgrimage and historical excavation.

We learn about the ancient and mediaeval roots of Jewish communities in Europe and about the rich Jewish life and culture that flourished in thousands of cities , towns and villages before the Nazi inferno destroyed European Jewry. Gilbert details the attacks on Jewish communities in Germany and elsewhere during the crusades and the pogroms , and blood libels through the ages. Gilbert details the specific horrors of the holocaust associated with each location.

We learn interesting and little known historical facts , such as that Spanish leader Francisco Franco protected the Jews , refusing Hitler's demmands to deport the Jews of Spain , who had been marked out for mass murder at the Wannsee conference , and how Franco also gave shelter to thousands of Jews from France who had managed to cross the Pyrenees.

We learn of the plans Stalin devised before his death to mass murder the Jews of Russia and deport the remainder to Siberia.

The horrors in the book which are recounted are inumerable and at times very graphic-sensitive readers should be careful. These are horrific and bloodchilling accounts of demonic inhumanity and cruelty , of unbelievable suffering.
We also read of heroism and survival against the odds.

It is difficult to believe that such a rich Jewish life existed in places where today there are no or very few Jews.
Holocaust survivor Rachael Fraenkel speaks of what for her was the most 'painful reminder' of the Holocaust "was an exhibition in the building in Prague. Burial Society of paintings by children in Terezin. In the majority of cases the only reminder of the child's life seems to be the paintings they had produced. The mixture of subjects from beautiful countryside scenes wretched and and tormented faces was painful to see. To see such horrific scenes from the minds of such young people , must surely reflect their mental anguish. All that went through my mind was "so young , so innocent , so dead."

The origins where in a village in Poland of the Israeli National Anthem-Hatikvah-The Hope.
Israel is the country that arose out of the ashes of the holocaust - the reborn life of the Jewish people.
The international fury against the collective Jewish presence in Israel certainly mirrors the rise of Nazism.
If we can learn anything from the holocaust it is to defend Israel and her people from the hatred that inievitably leads to mass murder.