How was it possible?: a Holocaust reader

As the Holocaust passes out of living memory, future generations will no longer come face-to-face with Holocaust survivors. But the lessons of that terrible period in history are too important to let slip past. How Was It Possible?, edited and introduced by Peter Hayes, provides teachers and students with a comprehensive resource about the Nazi persecution of Jews. Deliberately resisting the reflexive urge to dismiss the topic as too horrible to be understood intellectually or emotionally, the anthology sets out to provide answers to questions that may otherwise defy comprehension.

Ch. 1 The Context -- Introduction / Peter Hayes -- Antisemitism -- horn Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred / Robert S. Wistrich -- Racism -- from The Racial State / Wolfgang Wippermann -- Contradictions in Central Europe -- from The Pity of It All / Amos Elon -- Germany's Turmoil, 1918 -- 1933 -- from Nazi Germany: A New History / Klaus P. Fischer -- The Interwar Jewish Heartland -- from The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars / Klaus P. Fischer -- ch. 2 Nazism in Power -- Introduction / Peter Hayes -- Elite Cooperation -- from Das Amt und die Vergangenheit [The Office and the Past] / Eckart Conze -- Street-Level Coercion -- from Defying Hitler / Sebastian Haffner -- The Claims of Community -- from Belonging and Genocide / Thomas Kuhne -- Aryanization -- from From Boycott to Annihilation / Avraham Barkai -- Talk of "Annihilation."

Ernst von Weizsacker's Remarks to a Swiss Diplomat, November 15, 1938, from Documents Diplomatiques Suisses -- "Jews, What Now?" from Das Schwarze Korps, November 24, 1938 -- Hitler's Reichstag Speech, January 30, 1939, from Nazism 1939 -- 1945 -- ch. 3 Impediments to Escape -- Introduction / Peter Hayes -- The United States and Refugees, 1…