The Ravine

'This book is an act of restitution' David Aaronovitch, Book of the Week, The Times

A strikingly original book about a terrible photograph – an exceptionally rare image documenting the horrific final moments of a Jewish family in Ukraine.

The terrible mass shootings in Poland and the Ukraine are often neglected in studies of the Holocaust, because the perpetrators were meticulously careful to avoid leaving any evidence of their actions. Wendy Lower stumbled across one such piece of evidence – a photograph documenting the shooting of a mother and her children and the men who killed them – and has crafted a forensically brilliant and moving study that brings the larger horror of the genocide into focus.

One of the most compelling themes to emerge from her investigations in Ukraine, Slovakia, Germany and the USA is the identity and the surprising role of the photographer who recorded the killings. He must, she assumed, have been part of the Nazi organization of genocide. The truth was different...