Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps [Hardcover]

Eugene Aroneanu (Compiler), Thomas Whissen (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0275954463 | ISBN-13: 978-0275954468

This book is a translation of an oral history of the concentration camp experience recorded immediately after World War II as told by men and women who endured it and lived to tell about it. Their vivid, firsthand accounts heighten the reality of this experience in ways no third-person narrative can capture. Even when they are at a loss for words, their struggle to find language to express the unspeakable is, in itself, mute testimony to the ordeal etched forever on their memories. The testimonies are arranged to reflect the chronology of camp experience (from deportation to liberation), the living conditions of camp life (from malnutrition to forced labor), and the various methods of abuse and extermination (from castration to gassing and cremation). The chronology gives the accounts a narrative flow and even creates a certain suspense, especially as liberation nears and hopes rise.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Aroneanu, a Romanian who drew up the tables of atrocities for the Nuremburg trials, compiled these accounts told by men and women survivors of concentration camps immediately after World War II. Translated by Whissen (Wright State Univ.), this oral history is organized chronologically by camp experience from deportation to liberation. Topics include internment, camp regulations, life in the camps (e.g., labor, sanitary conditions), medical experiences, execution, and the number of dead. The book also includes a list of camps, command posts, and prisons that were used as places of incarceration. The reader will gain from this compilation a vivid and horrifying sense of what life was like in a concentration camp. Recommended for World War II collections.?Mary F. Salony, West Virginia Northern Community Coll. Lib., Wheeling
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Aroneanu, a Romanian, was assigned the task of drawing up the first lists of Nazi atrocities in 1945 for use at the Nuremberg war crime trials. This book is the result of his research. The 100 eyewitness testimonies by concentration camp survivors are intermixed, arranged by subject matter to reflect the chronology of the camps from deportations to liberation. The survivors were not only Jews but also Gypsies, Catholics, Communists, and Jehovah's Witnesses; attorneys, doctors, teachers, students, soldiers, a bakery clerk, and a mechanic. They speak of unbelievable horror; the book also contains statements from 25 official reports from such death camps as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Ravensbruck. No other work documents these crimes against humanity as powerfully and vividly as this one. George Cohen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Praeger Publishers (September 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275954463
• ISBN-13: 978-0275954468
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,517,316 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Translation and Oral History at its Very Best, October 15, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Jacksonville, AL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps (Hardcover)

It is hard to believe that this book is only now available in English. Consisting entirely of eye-witness accounts of life in German concentration camps, the work served as an important source of evidence during the Nazi trials. The accounts, however, are compiled so that they form a narrative that is roughly chronological, beginning with the experience of deportation and ending with the grim business of counting bodies. In between lies the whole experience of the prisoner: the forced and brutalizing work, the whimsical or studied methods of torture, the grisly medical experiments, the routine executions, the gasing of ever larger groups, the ovens that burned night and day, and constantly, throughout the story, the capricious beating, kicking and whipping. Primo Levi, who wrote so eloquently about the danger of forgetting, would have appreciated this book.

And Thomas Whissen, the translator, has performed an admirable and selfless job. He has rendered this story in a language that is so clear, so transparent, that one forgets that one is reading words on a page. The book leaves one feeling bruised and battered, and not quite willing to go back into a world of comforts. It leaves one deeply suspicious of humanity. And this perhaps is a good thing.

Incidentally, it is difficult to imagine a book better suited for university courses on the holocaust.

Carmine Di Biase, Ph.D. ([e-mail])

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Use with caution, March 7, 2001

By 

Steve Gowler (Berea, KY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps (Paperback)

I purchased this book hoping I might be able to use it in the course I teach on the Holocaust. It includes a vast and rich body of testimony that would be invaluable if it were placed in context. However this work is a list of statements, usually identified only by an individual's name. For most of the statements, it is impossible to determine which camp is being described. This book suggests that there was a general concentration camp experience, and that it is not necessary to distinghish one camp from the other. I believe that premise is problematical on both counts. Even the photographs have generic captions that do not identify the camps they depict. While the first-person accounts of the Nazi order of terror are often gripping, this book should be used with caution by those seeking a precise historical understanding of the Holocaust.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent overview of concentration camp life, March 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps (Paperback)

This book is a compilation of statements made by hundreds of different Holocaust survivors. The statements are pieced together in a way that makes the readers feel they are reading a story told by one person. The book takes stories from survivors of all the different camps and compiles them to depict the horror felt by all victims of the camps. I would say this book is an excellent introduction to what life in the camps was like.