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A Small Town Near Auschwitz
Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust
Mary Fulbrook

Oxford University Press, USA
November 9, 2012 / ISBN 978-0199603305
NonFiction / History
Amazon

Reviewed by Linda Morelli

In A Small Town Near Auschwitz, British historian Mary Fulbrook tells the story of Udo Klausa, a Nazi civilian administrator (Landrat) who was sent to the small town of Bedzin, Poland, to implement Nazi policies on governing conquered Polish lands after the Nazi invasion in September 1939. Bedzin, only 25 miles from Auschwitz, was one of numerous venues the Nazis used to carry out their policy of German colonization through the forcible removal of Jews and the reduction of the remaining Poles to sub-human status.

This novel discusses the middle layer of Bedzin administrators and officials who implemented Nazi policies, enabled the preconditions to the Final Solution in Bedzin, yet were not linked to the consequences of their actions after the war. The author uses Klausa to provide a total picture how the Nazi policies were implemented and how various Bedzin civilian officials cooperated with the SS executioners at Auschwitz. Fulbrook supplies many first-hand accounts from survivors of life in Bedzin during the Nazi occupation.

During the 1960s to 1980s, Germany conducted investigations of these Nazi administrators like Klausa, however very few were found guilty. The difficulty was the lack of concrete, written evidence of their direct involvement in the murderous acts. We can only speculate as to whether or not Klausa was aware of the dreadful outcome of his participation in the Nazi extermination effort.

I enjoyed A Small Town Near Auschwitz because it is an eye opener. Mary Fulbrook has dealt with an aspect of Nazi government about which little has been written: how mid-level functionaries played a key role in implementing Nazi policies. This book is also a chilling story of one of Hitler’s many civilian enablers and I highly recommend it for World War II enthusiasts and history lovers.

Reviewer's Note: Mary Fulbrook is Professor of German History at University College London. A leading authority on modern German history, Fulbrook is also a Fellow of the British Academy, a former Chair of the German History Society, and a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Foundation for the former Concentration Camps at Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora.
Reviewed 2013
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