About - The Coming of Hitler & The Holocaust - Six CD Set

How does the history of the Jewish People impact us today?
Noted Jewish historian Rabbi Berel Wein traces the fascinating story of 20th century forces that drive modern Jewish life.
Follow Rabbi Wein's anecdotes and insights into this most turbulent piece of our history.

Features - The Coming of Hitler & The Holocaust - Six CD Set

CD-1 Jewish Europe Between the Wars With a country-by-country breakdown, Rabbi Wein depicts the unsettling period between the two world wars in which anti-Semitism was fomenting everywhere. Whether Jews lived in Russia where Stalin ruled, in Poland where laws restricting Torah observance were official government policy, or in Germany where Jews were the scapegoats for the country's defeat, their future was grim. Coupled with restrictions on immigration to Palestine and the United States, in these harrowing times, for the Jews there truly was no safe place to escape.

CD-2 The Coming of Hitler Probably no other personality in history has brought about as much psychological speculation as Hitler's. Rabbi Wein's narrates the significant events in Hitler's life: his obsessive anti-Semitism, clear even in his early adolescence, his military service in World War I, and his growing political career. Though he spelled out his intentions quite plainly in Mein Kampf, people in power inside and outside Germany made the tragic miscalculation that they could control him, the result being twelve years of carnage unsurpassed in all of human history.

CD-3 American Jewry before WW II Jewish integration into American life has been so successful, it is easy to forget that it came at a terrible cost. With historical fact and personal remembrances of his own years in public school, Rabbi Wein captures the pressures on Jews to assimilate into "the melting pot." Out of this environment grew the Conservative movement whose aim was to preserve traditional Judaism for fear it would disappear altogether. Though those dire predictions were wrong and Jews today can express their Jewishness freely, this lecture will remind every American Jew that even in the not-too-distant past, our existence here was not so rosy.

CD-4 The Second World War World War II was the most destructive war in all of world history, and Rabbi Wein looks at it from a military point of view, outlining its most pivotal battles, from Hitler's initial invasion of Poland, to the blitzkrieg over England, and ultimately to the race to build the atom bomb. Also analyzing the strategies and miscalculations of the leaders and generals of the war years, listeners get a glimpse of the fear and passion that swept the world in the great effort to defeat Hitler.

CD-5 Destruction of European Jewry Rabbi Wein opens this most serious of topics with an acknowledgment that no lecture can accurately depict all the horrors of the Holocaust or answer the nagging philosophical questions they raise. Nevertheless, Rabbi Wein demonstrates how Hitler's intense propaganda campaign created a genocidal environment. The German people became so desensitized to human life that the original anti-Jewish boycotts became anti-Jewish riots, and how riots descended yet further into the mass shootings by the einzatzgruppen and ultimately, into indescribable torture and the killing camps.

CD-6 Guilt and Horror  After the world saw the atrocities committed in the Holocaust, they realized it was a blot against them. For a brief time, therefore, public opinion of the Jews was relatively positive. But the Jews had more battles to fight. War refugees were desperate to enter Palestine, but England was doing its best to appease the Arabs and turn them away. This earned them censure in the Western World, and under pressure, England agreed to leave Palestine and let the UN determine its future. The spectacular events that followed, on both the diplomatic and military fronts, culminated in the creation of the State of Israel.

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