How Was It Possible?: A Holocaust Reader

The book is a large anthology (904 pages) of the best recent scholarship on the Holocaust. Peter Hayes ’68, who chose and edited the fifty-six excerpts arranged in nine chapters, provides an introduction to the volume and to each chapter.

“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.