Auschwitz: A History

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It doesn’t make sense to use the individual crime of murder as the basis for prosecution when what you’re dealing with is mass murder, which is part of a system of collective violence.” Finally, let’s move on to Marie Jalowicz-Simon’s Underground in Berlin: A Young Woman’s Extraordinary Tale of Survival in the Heart of Nazi Germany. I’d never heard of her, but this is probably the most extraordinary story of all the ones that you’ve mentioned. Tell us about it. The Saboteur of Auschwitz: The Inspiring True Story of a British Soldier Held Prisoner in Auschwitz (Kindle Edition) That aspect of the Holocaust has not lodged in public consciousness in the same way as the Auschwitz story. I think one of the things we have to remember is that the memory of survivors that has come down to us paints a very unique picture of people who are of a particular age group: young at the time, selected largely for slave labour because they were strong and fit to work, and who lived to a ripe old age in which they could communicate their experiences. One of the things I found difficult about choosing books that are still in print is that many don’t convey the experiences of those who never wrote—those who were much less successful, or less literate, or didn’t have the means or the wherewithal to publish.

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Wanda wrote: "While a superbly written book, The Cellist of Sarajevo may not be appropriate for this list unless one is speaking about the Bosnian Holocaust of 1992-1995." Told with a fairytale-like lyricism, this is a fable of family and redemption set against the horrors of the Holocaust. A poor woodcutter and his wife lived in a forest. Despite their poverty and the war raging around them, the wife prays that they will be blessed with a child. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. By signing up you agree to our terms of use All But My Life: A Memoir by Gerda Weissman Klein Not all of them came to the reunion. What becomes very clear is that they all had different ways of dealing with the past. Otto Dov Kulka became a professional historian; he wrote about anything but his personal experiences until his very late memoir. Another one became a painter, another a rabbi. But the miserable man from Queens was not there. He wouldn’t talk. They just had a dreadful dinner in New York and that was it.Pendas also shows that the way the press reported the trial interacted with a wider ambivalence among the public. You had these younger journalists who thought they were mounting this great crusade to bring Auschwitz to public attention, and a wider public who were unsettled by this and didn’t like it. But the highest percentage of those opposed to the trial were people who were young adults in the Third Reich who’d actually been mobilized to fight for Hitler, who’d been participants in the war. That’s very interesting. He returned to Germany after the war and was determined to mount the Auschwitz trial as a full-blown explication of the crimes of the Nazis, in the face of massive opposition. Most people in high places in West Germany in the late 1950s when he began this attempt, through the early and mid-1960s while he mounted the trial, were opposed to the process. It wasn’t West Germany facing up to its past. It was Bauer pushing it through against significant political opposition. Before we get into detail discussing your book choices, I think it might be helpful to understand exactly what Auschwitz was. It wasn’t just one camp, but a group of camps—is that right? Introduced to the American public in the early 1960s by Philip Roth, Borowski’s spellbinding short story collection was based on the writer’s two-year incarceration at Auschwitz as a political prisoner. Borowski, who was a non-Jewish Polish journalist, provides a perspective on camp life quite different from the more common survivor narratives. Underground in Berlin: A Young Woman’s Extraordinary Tale of Survival in the Heart of Nazi GermanybyMarie Jalowicz Simon

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One of the great Hebrew novels, Badenheim 1939 was beloved writer Appelfeld’s first novel to be published in English in 1980. It revolves around a fictional, mostly Jewish resort town in Austria, in which the Nazis, never explicitly mentioned, are disguised in the abstract as the “Sanitation Department,” a specter that drives the Jewish vacationers to distraction. Appelfeld was a survivor himself — and every word he wrote rings true. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder Successful in the sense that she managed to make both selves authentic. I’ve heard survivors completely break down in interviews because they feel the present isn’t their real life. I think Delbo was more stable. But this leads to another thing which I think is important about this account: she wasn’t Jewish. She makes it very clear how dreadful it was even for non-Jewish prisoners, and yet registers that it was even worse for Jewish prisoners. Yes, it’s a good read. I think it’s an important read. What it also brings out well is the public reactions to, and the wider significance of, the Auschwitz trial. We’ve made a big deal of it and that’s in part because there was massive media coverage, largely because of the way Fritz Bauer mounted the trial. Bauer was determined to ensure there was media coverage. He was determined to ensure that victims and survivors were brought from all around the world to give evidence, a bit like the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.Jarmila wrote: "Hi,can anyone recommend me the books that are dealing with the problem of post traumatic stress of holocaust survivor? tx" Durlacher, like Otto Dov Kulka, talks about seeing the American airplanes flying across the blue skies above Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 . . . both boys saw them almost like little toys in the air” Lengyel was a surgical assistant in Transylvania when she was deported to Auschwitz; she was able to secure work in an infirmary, a job that ultimately saved her life. This 1946 memoir is an unflinching account of her time in that area, her interactions with Dr. Josef Mengeleand her observations of the medical experiments performed on inmates. A deeply uncomfortable read, Lengyel’s memoir is a necessary living, breathing document. King of the Jews byLeslie Epstein Well, I was supposed to find five books on Auschwitz. I’m wilfully choosing one which isn’t about Auschwitz, but rather about evading it.

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In East Germany, former Nazis were six or seven times more likely to be prosecuted and convicted as in West Germany” That this gripping story of memory and tragedy won both the 1996 National Jewish Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle award should clue you in to how extraordinary this book is. What begins, familiarly, as the story of a young boy learning about the tragic but mysterious fate of his relatives in the Holocaust, ends in a continent-spanning labyrinth, a sad and seductive tale of near mythic proportions. The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. by George Steiner The West Germans chose to resort to the old German criminal law; they didn’t want to adopt the Nuremberg principles. They didn’t want anything that was retroactive, punishing crimes that weren’t defined at the time. But the problem with the West German definition of murder was that it entailed showing individual intent and excess brutality. This meant, effectively, that if you couldn’t show that an individual was subjectively motivated to kill, they couldn’t be convicted of murder. I chose this for several reasons. She was a quite remarkable female resistance fighter in France, who was transported to Auschwitz after having to witness the murder of her husband. (The men were shot; the women were taken to Auschwitz.) She was on a convoy of 230 women sent there. They entered the camp supposedly singing the Marseillaise.The overwhelming majority of people who had worked at Auschwitz were never brought to court at all”

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First in your selection of books on Auschwitz, we have Charlotte Delbo. Tell me a bit about her story and why you chose her trilogy, Auschwitz and After. Primo Levi, an Italian chemist, was arrested as a member of the anti-fascist resistance during the war and deported to Auschwitz. His impassioned attempt to understand the 'rationale' behind the concentration camps was completed shortly before his death in 1987. Seweryna Szmaglewska was a Polish Catholic who produced one of the initial first-hand accounts of the extermination process at Auschwitz. Translated by Jadwiga Rynas. New York: H. Holt, 1947. What the East Germans point out about the Adenauer government is quite true. Adenauer’s chief aide in his Chancellery, Hans Globke, had been the official legal commentator on the Nuremberg laws for Hitler in the mid-1930s. Theodor Oberländer—who was Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and Victims of War under Adenauer—knew all about refugees and expellees from Eastern Europe precisely because he’d been concerned with “population planning” and involved in “anti-partisan” warfare under the Nazi regime, alongside the Einsatzgruppen, and potentially compromised in this way. It’s absolutely disgusting, actually, the number of former Nazis that Adenauer had in his government. East Germany was goading West Germany, if you like, to make a move.At the same time, the political parties in Austria were concerned to rehabilitate and integrate former Nazis. A lot of political pressure was put on judges, prosecutors and defence attorneys to ensure acquittals. From 1955 onwards, there were very few cases indeed in Austria. Those that were brought tended to end in acquittals; then from the mid-1970s the trials simply dried up entirely.