No symbol of the Holocaust is more profound than Auschwitz. But, despite the infamy of the place, the crushing numbers of dead, the overwhelming scale of the crime, and the vast abandoned site of chimneys and rusting barbed wire isolate Auschwitz from us.

How could an ordinary town become a site of such terror? Why was this particular town chosen? Who conceived, created, and constructed the camp? This unprecedented history reveals how an unremarkable Polish village was transformed into a killing field. Using architectural designs and planning documents recently discovered in Poland and Russia and over 200 illustrations, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present traces the successive stages of how Auschwitz became the focus of a Germanized Poland and the epicenter of the Final Solution.
-- "The important story that Dwork and van Pelt tell -- really for the first time-- is not'why the Holocaust?' but 'why Auschwitz?'" -- Boston Globe