One, by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust

In a first-class piece of investigative reporting, Miller, a New York Times editor, explores how people in six countries preserve or distort memories of the Holocaust. In Germany, she found a young generation undertaking a shamed, angry reckoning with the Nazi past. Austrians, who were Hitler's first enthusiastic allies, now paint themselves as his first victims. The Netherlands' wartime record with respect to Jews is ``in many respects appalling,'' Miller observes in a chapter on that country (whose ``unofficial patron saint'' is Anne Frank) that will stun readers. In France Miller attended the trial of Nazi Klaus Barbie, a drama that generated slight interest among the French, who prefer to keep alive the myth of a glorious Resistance. In the Soviet Union, she discovered that the Holocaust is not officially recognized, even though invading Germans exterminated some 700,000 Soviet Jews. This shocking survey is itself an act of remembrance. (May)