Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 312 pages
• Published by: Lantern Books February 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1930051999
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1930051997
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 14.4 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
Isaac Bashevis Singer first suggested that "for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka." Charles Patterson (Anti-Semitism: The Road to the Holocaust and Beyond) expands on that risky analogy in his latest book, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. Patterson hypothesizes a risky causal relationship, too, when he writes, "since violence begets violence, the enslavement of animals injected a higher level of domination and coercion into human history by creating oppressive hierarchical societies and unleashing large-scale warfare never seen before." Was human "enslavement" of animals the first step on the road to the Holocaust? Patterson doesn't say as much, but it's clear that he feels our inhumanity to the nonhuman is one of our greatest evils.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Review
"sheds light on violence against animals and humans so that we might one day put an end to it." -- Moment Magazine, June 2002

"Compelling, controversial, iconoclasticstrongly recommendeda unique contribution." -- Midwest Book Review, May 2002

"Eternal Treblinka is an eye-opening, thought-provoking book that I highly recommend." -- The Gantseh Megillah (Montreal), April 2002

"Important and timelywritten with great sensitivity and compassionI hope that Eternal Treblinka will be widely read." -- Martyrdom and Resistance, March/April 2002

"There are good booksgreat booksand important booksEternal Treblinka is all three." -- Satya Magazine, June/July 2002

Reader Reviews
When I first learned that Charles Patterson was going to write a book about "our treatment of animals and the Holocaust," I had some misgivings. I was aware that some animal rights advocates had made superficial, misleading comparisons between the treatment of animals on factory farms and the treatment of Jews and others in the Holocaust, and I knew that this had hurt the vegetarian/animal rights cause by giving people an excuse to avoid considering the many negative effects of animal-based diets. However, I was an early endorser of Patterson's project because I felt that we needed new, creative ways to alert people to the horrors of modern intensive livestock agriculture, and my knowledge of his character, sensitivity, and background convinced me that he would be an ideal person for this project. My confidence in his ability to sensitively carry out this project was well placed. The book is very well researched (with almost 700 end notes), and it is written with great sensitivity and compassion. Eternal Treblinka does not equate animals and people. Rather, it shows how the frequent vilification of people as rats, vermin, pigs, insects, beasts, monkeys, etc., dehumanizes people and makes it easier to oppress, enslave, and murder them. He documents many examples of this process, relating it to the treatment of slaves, native American Indians, Japanese people during World War II, Vietnamese people during the Vietnam War, and other examples. The book carefully shows how the enslavement ("domestication") of animals became the model and inspiration for all the oppressions that followed. In particular. he documents a trail from slaughterhouse production lines to Henry Ford's assembly lines for the mass production of automobiles to Hitler's methods in the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. He also discusses the myth of Hitler's "vegetarianism"--his diet of little or no meat he often followed to reduce his chronic health problems. Throughout the book, Patterson is sensitive to the views of Holocaust survivors. Lucy Kaplan, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, has contributed an eloquent Foreword. An entire chapter profiles animal advocates who are Holocaust survivors, children or grandchildren of survivors, people who lost relatives in the Holocaust, and those who have given thought to the lessons of the Holocaust. Another chapter, "The Other Side of the Holocaust," discusses German and German-American animal advocates who began their lives in Nazi Germany. There is also a chapter on the exploitation and slaughter of animals as a major theme in the writings of Yiddish writer and Nobel laureate, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-91), many of whose characters were Holocaust survivors. The title of the book comes from a statement by one of Singer1s characters: "...for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka." The connections between the mentality and methods behind the oppression of animals and the oppression of human beings that are documented in this important and timely book have great potential to stir Jews (and others) to start to apply Jewish teachings about the proper treatment of animals, and thereby to help shift the world from its present perilous, inhumane path. I hope that Eternal Treblinka will be widely read, that its message will be extensively applied for the benefit of both humans and animals, and that it will help lead to that day when, in the words of Isaiah (11:6), "no one shall hurt nor destroy in all of God's Holy mountain."