Holocaust: The Events and Their Impact on Real People

Book by Angela Gluck Wood and Dan Stone

In association with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, DK Publishing is honored to publish HOLOCAUST:  The Events and Their Impact on Real People (July 2007; Ages 11+, 192 pages; $29.99; hardcover with full color throughout + DVD), a moving and powerful book for families, about one of the world’s most profound tragedies.  This comprehensive volume enables younger readers to understand the circumstances under which the Holocaust occurred and its impact on real people, through a unique combination of vivid pictorial spreads and a DVD that features survivors’ testimony culled from the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive.

In DK’s signature approach, HOLOCAUST uses datelines, maps, text, images, and charts to help reveal the many layers of this complex event.  The video testimonies by survivors and other witnesses that are featured in the DVD address both the tragedy they experienced as well as recollections of their childhood experiences, their traditions, their friendships, and their family.  “No secondhand description of the Holocaust can mimic the pinpoint clarity or richness of detail of a single eyewitness testimony,” says Douglas Greenberg, Professor of History and Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute.  “We are delighted to partner with a publisher that recognizes the educational value of the personal stories preserved in our archive.”

Featuring previously unpublished illustrations and photographs to depict the events leading up to and throughout the Holocaust, this important book for young readers gives context to chilling photographs of those who were deported to concentration camps (p. 83).  With messages of tolerance, hope, and endurance, HOLOCAUST is a powerful resource to introduce a new generation to one of history’s most difficult chapters.

Steven Spielberg, founder of the Shoah Foundation, provided the foreword for the book.  “While it is an authoritative history of the Holocaust that combines text and images in an altogether uncommon way, it is also a human record of the Shoah and its meaning.  These pages also contain the faces and the words of men and women who survived the murderous anti-Semitic world of Nazi-dominated Europe,” Spielberg commented.

HOLOCAUST is the best single-volume illustrated reference for young people on this subject.  It will undoubtedly foster not only an appreciation for the struggle and courage of survivors of the tragedy, but also for the lives they and their families have rebuilt today.

HOLOCAUST:  The Events and Their Impact on Real People
By Angela Gluck Wood and Dan Stone
Publication date: July 2007
Ages:  11+; 192 pgs; full color throughout; ISBN: 978-0-7566-2535-1
$29.99; Hardcover + DVD

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Angela Gluck Wood co-founded and works for Instead, the Inservice Training and Educational Development company.  She has worked as a teacher trainer, an Ofsted inspector and broadcaster, writer, and curriculum developer.  She is an educational consultant, and specializes in Jewish and Israel studies.  She has written more than 30 books, mainly on religious and cultural diversity, but including work on Holocaust survivors.

Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History at Royal Holloway University of London.  His research interests include interpretations of the Holocaust, history of eugenics, racism, genocide, right-wing ideology, the reception of Nietzsche, history of anthropology, and philosophy of history.  He has published a number of articles on the interpretation of the Holocaust, and is the author of Breeding Superman:  Nietzsche, Race, and Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain; Responses to Nazism in Britain 1933-1939; and has edited The Historiography of the Holocaust.

ABOUT USC SHOAH FOUNDATION INSTITUTE FOR VISUAL HISTORY AND EDUCATION

With a collection of nearly 52,000 video testimonies in 32 languages and from 56 countries, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s archive is the largest visual history archive in the world.  The Institute interviewed Jewish survivors, homosexual survivors, Jehovah’s Witness survivors, liberators and liberation witnesses, political prisoners, rescuers and aid providers, Roma and Sinti survivors (Gypsy), survivors of Eugenics policies, and war crimes trials participants.

The Shoah Foundation Institute is part of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California.  The Institute’s mission is to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry—and the suffering they cause—through the educational use of the Institute’s visual history testimonies.  The Institute relies upon partnerships in the United States and around the world to provide public access to the archive and advance scholarship in many fields of inquiry.  The Institute and its partners also utilize the archive to develop educational products and programs for use in many countries and languages.  For more information, visit sfi.usc.edu.

CONTACT
Mindy Fichter, DK Publishing
Melinda.Fichter@dk.com
646-674-4042