The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed

ISBN: 0358627931

Author: Lower, Wendy

Condition: New

A single photograph-an exceptionally rare action shot documenting the horrific murder of a Jewish family-drives a riveting forensic investigation by a gifted Holocaust scholar.In 2009, the acclaimed author of Hitlers Furies was shown a photograph just brought to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The documentation of the Holocaust is vast, but there are virtually no images of a Jewish family at the actual moment of murder, in this case by German officials and Ukrainian collaborators. A Ukrainian shooters rifle is inches from a womans head, obscured in a cloud of smoke. The woman is bending forward, holding the hand of a barefoot boy. And-only one of the shocking revelations of Wendy Lowers brilliant ten-year investigation of this image-the photograph reveals the shins of another child, slipping from the womans lap.Wendy Lowers gripping detective work-in Ukraine, Germany, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States-recovers astonishing layers of detail concerning the open-air massacres in Ukraine. The identities of the victims, of the killers-and, remarkably, of the photographer who openly took the picture, as a secret act of resistance-are dramatically uncovered. Finally, in the hands of this exceptional scholar, a single image unlocks a new understanding of the place of the family unit in the history and aftermath of Nazi genocide.