With The Years of Extermination , Saul Friedländer completes his major historical work on Nazi Germany and the Jews. The book describes and interprets the persecution and murder of the Jews throughout occupied Europe. The enactment of German extermination policies and measures depended on the cooperation of local authorities, the assistance of police forces, and the passivity of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. This implementation depended as well on the victims readiness to submit to orders, often with the hope of attenuating them or of surviving long enough to escape the German vise. This multifaceted study—at all levels and in different places—enhances the perception of the magnitude, complexity, and interrelatedness of the many components of this history. Based on a vast array of documents and an overwhelming choir of voices—mainly from diaries, letters, and memoirs—Saul Friedländer avoids domesticating the memory of these unprecedented and horrific events. The convergence of these various aspects gives a unique quality to The Years of Extermination . In this work, the history of the Holocaust has found its definitive representation.

弗裏德蘭德爾齣生於布拉格，1939年逃往法國，1948年移居以色列。他現在在洛杉磯的加利福尼亞大學講授曆史。　　1997年，索爾·弗裏德蘭德爾的《迫害的年代：納粹德國與猶太人，1933一1939》齣版發行，這是他的兩捲曆史著作《納粹德國與猶太人》的第一捲。他在前言中說．他的意圖是”從曆史角度真實記錄大屠殺．把凶手實施的政策、周圍社會的態度和受害者的世界放在一個完整的框架裏”。弗裏德蘭德爾的第二捲《滅絕的年代：納粹德國與猶太人．1939—1945》也是一樣。這本書如今已經成為記述納粹德國大規模謀殺歐洲猶太人的權威曆史著作。