Golden Harvest

Book excerpt: The starting point of Jan Gross's A Golden Harvest is a haunting photograph that depicts a group of "diggers" atop a mountain of ashes at Treblinka, where some 800,000 Jews were gassed and cremated. The diggers are hoping to find gold and precious stones that Nazi executioners may have overlooked. The story captured in this grainy black-and-white photograph symbolizes the vast, continent-wide plunder of Jewish wealth. Beginning with one photograph, this moving book evokes the depth and range, as well as the intimacy, of the final solution.