Anatomy of a genocide: the life and death of a town called Buczacz

"A fascinating and cautionary examination of how genocide can take root at the local level--turning neighbors, friends, and even family members against one another--as seen through the eastern European border town of Buczacz during World War II." -- Amazon.com

"For more than four hundred years, the Eastern European border town of Buczacz--today part of Ukraine--was home to Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews, all living side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and in the span of a few years the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. The violence lifted as quickly as it began, leaving the survivors searching for answers. In Anatomy of a Genocide, historian Omer Bartov shows that ethnic cleansing doesn't occur, as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, as the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren't just sociopathic soldiers--they are neighbors and friends and family. Others are average middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their spouses and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder: an island of normality floating on an ocean of blood. For more than two decades, Bartov--whose mother was raised in Buczacz--traveled extensively throughout the region, scouring archives and amassing thousands of documents and photographs rarely seen until now. He relied on hundreds of first-person testimonies by victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and rescuers. The result is a vivid, suspenseful investigation into one of the biggest crimes in modern history. Anatomy of a Genocide changes our understanding of the Holocaust and the nature of mass killing as a whole. However, this book isn't just an attempt to understand what happened in the past. It's a warning of how it could happen again, in our own towns and cities--much more easily than we might think."--Dust jacket