Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1938-1945 [Paperback]

Hermann Langbein (Author), Harry Zohn (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996 | ISBN-10: 0826409407 | ISBN-13: 978-0826409409

In this major and comprehensive work, hailed by Le Monde as a "monumental study, " Hermann Langbein shatters the myth that all prisoners of concentration camps during World War II passively let themselves be slaughtered. A prisoner himself and one of the leaders of resistance at Auschwitz, Langbein painstakingly documents the detailed account of the history of the camps and the story of resistance. Spanning the initial years to the chaotic weeks before liberation, Against All Hope is the first systematic presentation of organized resistance. Deeply moving, it is an unforgettable testament to the resilience and determination of the human spirit. As the camps were being established, Langbein examines the composition of the initial prisoners; a mixture of political prisoners (Reds), convicted criminals (Greens), Jews, and "anti-socials" and reveals the brutal struggle for camp domination between the Reds and Greens. With analytic detail, he presents the history and nature of the individual camps and the inmate self-government. In "The Actors, " Langbein recognizes for the first time the various inmate groups, Germans, Austrians, Poles, Russians, Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies and Jews, and how they related to resistance. Langbein portrays the incredible impossibility of resistance against the all-powerful total domination of the Nazi camp administration. The prisoners were to be morally broken, psychically disabled, and even physically destroyed. To resist against this systematic demoralization, its isolation from the rest of the world, and its intention to exterminate, was inconceivable. Through chronic malnutrition, beatings, torture, and the permanent terrorism ofthe SS, the prisoners were led to believe "there is only one way out of here: through the chimney." And yet, resistance, individual initiatives and organized action, to aid fellow inmates, to escape, to revolt, to thwart management campaigns, to mitigate the horrendous crimes were

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An astonishing mosaic of acts of courage and moral strength, Langbein's moving, invaluable history is the fullest account to date of resistance to Nazi terror by prisoners within the concentration camps. Laying to rest the notion that Jews generally went to their deaths unresistingly or apathetically, he documents camp inmates' armed uprisings, widespread sabotage, escapes, organized underground resistance activities and spontaneous acts of defiance. Fighting against an all-powerful machinery of terror, prisoners shared bread, kept imperiled fellow inmates out of the clutches of the Nazi SS, killed stool pigeons and smuggled information to the outside world. Langbein, an Austrian veteran of the Spanish Civil War, spent four years in Nazi death camps and led the underground movement in Auschwitz. His myth-dispelling book systemically details the resistance activities of Germans, Poles, Austrians, Russians, French, Czechs, Gypsies and others.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

This detailed and well-documented book provides the first systematic treatment of resistance by prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps. Langbein, himself a former prisoner and resistance leader at Auschwitz, describes a camp "self-government" system that often played one group of prisoners against another, and the conflict that often existed between the Greens (prisoners with a criminal past) and the Reds (opponents of the Nazi regime). The author also describes how groups of prisoners (Germans, Austrians, Poles, Communists, Social Democrats, Jews, and Gypsies) organized themselves to carry out acts of resistance and the various forms that resistance could take. Not surprisingly, according to Langbein, the discipline of Party life made the Communists especially effective at organizing resistance networks. This serious study belongs in larger popular collections.
Mark Weber, Kent State Univ., Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 502 pages
• Publisher: Continuum Intl Pub Group (Sd) (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826409407
• ISBN-13: 978-0826409409
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,655,537 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important chronicle, a serious historical contribution., August 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1938-1945 (Paperback)

Herman Langbein is one of the best known Auschwitz historians, and this book chronicles, in painstaking detail, acts of resistance and defiance that took place in the nazi concentration camps. The book recounts simple acts of humanity between prisoners, far reaching acts of organised resistance (for example using the nazi's obsession with bureaucracy - people selected for extermination were saved by altering forms), to open acts of insurrection towards the end of the war.

Langbein, himself a key member of Combat Group Auschwitz, uses all the rigour and objectivity we expect of the serious historian. The book is an important contribution in these days when those who survived to bear witness are fewer and where the accounts by important witnesses such as Filip Muller, Hans Marsalek and Eugen Kogon, are out of print.

This book is especially important as evidence to counter the Holocaust denialists, and those who condemned Jewish and other people for "acting like sheep".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating and uplifting read that shouldn't be missed by history readers, October 13, 2009

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Against all Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps (Paperback)

While some endure and hope for the best, there were those who fought. "Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps: 1938-1945" tells the story of the Jews who resisted their oppressors even in hopeless situations where they were unarmed against the German forces holding them captive. Hermann Langbein tells his own story of standing up in the final days of the war in the notorious camp of Auschwitz, and how he and others he knew made their stand even in hopeless situations. "Against All Hope" is a fascinating and uplifting read that shouldn't be missed by history readers.

3.0 out of 5 stars A good resource, September 14, 2011

By 

judd silver - See all my reviews

This review is from: Against all Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps (Paperback)

This book would make an excellent resource for the holocaust student who is writing a thesis or book on this topic. For the casual reader, it is very dry and full of unconnected details. One gets almost no sense of the actual horror of those camps. Those unfamiliar with the camps might come away believing that they were no worse than the average POW camp or Gulag. For example, we get no idea of what it means to be consigned to "the bunker". He writes positively about Wilhelm Boger without mentioning how he horrifically tortured so many prisoners in the Political Section in Auschwitz, for which he received a life sentence in 1960.