Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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. (cdibiase@jsucc.jsu.edu)

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.

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.

This book reads like a single history...beware. The author has taken original testimony from many people and woven them together as though they were from a single source (some pages actually have between 15 and 20 references). Appears to be the same sort of propaganda used to create the anti-semetism that fueled the holocaust. Very disappointing.