"The authentic, exhaustive, definitive account of the least-known death camps of the Nazi era." ―Raul Hilberg

Under the code name Operation Reinhard, more than one and a half million Jews were murdered between 1942 and 1943 in the concentration camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Unlike more well-known camps, which were used both for slave labor and extermination, these camps existed purely to murder Jews. Few victims survived to tell their stories, and the camps were largely forgotten after they were dismantled in 1943.

Yitzhak Arad, historian and principal prosecution witness at the Israeli trial of John Demjanjuk (accused of being Treblinka's infamous "Ivan the Terrible"), uses primary materials to reveal the complete story of these Nazi death camps. In addition to documenting the horror of the camps, Arad recounts the stories of those courageous enough to struggle against the Nazis and their "final solution." Arad's work retrieves the experiences of Operation Reinhard's victims and survivors from obscurity and exposes a terrible chapter in humanity's history.

"This comprehensive, judicious, and moving history is a remarkable contribution to Holocaust studies." —Library Journal

"Mr. Arad reports as a controlled and effective witness for the prosecution. . . . Mr. Arad's book, with its abundance of horrifying detail, reminds us of how far we have to go." —New York Times Book Review