Whoopi Goldberg is in the news again — here and here, for example. Ignorance and malice can be mitigated, but stupidity is something with which you are stuck. Ms. Goldberg is the bearer of a toxic combination. Her thoughts on the Jewish people are a case in point. Something does not compute.

When I was a teenager I read every paperback book I came across on the Holocaust. Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, by Miklós Nyiszli, for example, as well as I Cannot Forgive (as it was titled in England, where I bought it), by Rudolf Vrba, and Night, by Elie Wiesel. As an adult I read the histories by Lucy Davidowicz, Raul Hilberg, and Yehuda Bauer.

After watching the series A French Village, I returned to the subject this year with the two-volume history Nazi Germany and the Jews, by Saul Friedländer. Volume 1 has the subtitle The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939. Volume 2, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, is titled The Years of Extermination. It has the subtitle Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945. The two volumes are abridged in Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945.

Friedländer’s are the best books I have read on the subject.