Manus Mid­larsky, a lead­ing schol­ar on war who was raised as an Ortho­dox Jew,avoided study­ing the Holo­caust for many years, shun­ning the pain he knew it would bring. When he final­ly did bring him­self to face the sub­ject, this excel­lent book was the result. The Killing Trap recounts not only the hor­rors of the Holo­caust, but pro­vides a com­par­a­tive analy­sis of all the geno­cides of the 20th cen­tu­ry, which also includes those affect­ing Arme­ni­ans, Tut­sis, Cam­bo­di­ans, Rwan­dans and Roma­ni­ans. These killings are esti­mat­ed to have tak­en more than 40 mil­lion lives. 

Midlarsky’s abil­i­ty to exam­ine such a dif­fi­cult and painful sub­ject with clar­i­ty of thought and depth of feel­ing is remark­able. This well researched, well-writ­ten book is a major con­tri­bu­tion to the study of genocide.