Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps

The Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulag provide the context for this acclaimed examination of the human capacity for moral life. Drawing on a striking array of documents, Todorov reconstructs a vivid portrait of those who ran the camps and those who suffered their outrages. His complex and profound study restores a lost dimension to an anguished history, even as it offers an eloquent plea for the recognition of everyday virtues as a basis for contemporary morality.