War in the Shadow of Auschwitz: Memoirs of a Polish Resistance Fighter and Survivor of the Death Camps (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust) [Hardcover]

John Wiernicki (Author)

Book Description

Series: Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust | Publication Date: November 2001

1943: Polish underground fighter John Wiernicki is captured and beaten by the Gestapo, then shipped to Auschwitz. In this chilling memoir, John Wiernicki, a Gentile, details "life" in the infamous death camp and his battle to survive, physically and morally, in the face of utter evil. He begins by remembering his aristocratic youth, an idyllic time shattered by German invasion. The ensuing dark days of occupation would fire the adolescent Wiernicki with a burning desire to serve Poland, a cause that led him to valiant action and eventual arrest.

As a young non-Jew, Wiernicki was acutely sensitive to the depravity and injustice that engulfed him at Auschwitz. He bears witness to the harrowing selection and extermination of Jews doomed by birth to the gas chambers, to savage camp policies, brutal SS doctors, and rampant corruption within the system. He notes the difference in treatment between Jews and non-Jews. And he relives fearful unexpected encounters with two notorious "Angels of Death": Josef Mengele and Heinz Thilo.

After his transfer from Buchenwald to Ohrdruf, Wiernicki recounts events, which rarely have been recorded and which took place in the infamous Sonder Camp III, where prisoners in appalling working conditions worked on the construction of the underground shelter for Hitler's Headquarters train and Wehrmacht Communication Center in Jonastal Valley.

War in the Shadow of Auschwitz is an important historical and personal document. Its vivid portrait of prewar and wartime Poland, and of German concentration camps, provides a significant addition to the growing body of testimony by gentile survivors and a heartfelt contribution to fostering comprehension and understanding.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this simple but harrowing memoir, Wiernicki recounts his involvement with the Polish underground and his subsequent imprisonment in Nazi labor and death camps. What emerges is a raw expose of the evil perpetrated against millions, the "deliberate, cold, premeditated murder of innocent people." Wiernicki's young, privileged existence fundamentally changes in the summer of 1939, when the Germans invade Poland. Within 28 days, the German forces wreak havoc on the entire nation, but they focus on burning synagogues and splintering families within Jewish communities. A proud Pole, Wiernicki joins the Polish resistance movement an impassioned but fragmented and necessarily secretive group as a freedom fighter. After being captured and tortured by the Gestapo, Wiernicki, a gentile, meets a fate similar to that of the millions of Jews whose extermination he soon witnesses. Wiernicki captures the brutality of the SS men as well as the total dehumanization of the inmates the reason they are unable to wield any resistance within the camps. Particularly startling are Wiernicki's accounts of the guards' sadistic behavior; that other authors have told these tales before does not lessen their power. Frightened prisoners are forced to sing at the whim of an SS man on penalty of death; women are humiliated and abused. Ruthless beatings and brutal kickings are the norm, Wiernicki writes, even during routine work. That the author is a gentile survivor makes his testimony especially significant at a time when Holocaust denial is defended by some as academic freedom. 17 photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Wiernicki, a Polish partisan, was captured by the Gestapo in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. From there he was sent to Buchenwald, and he escaped during a death march in April 1945 as the Germans forced 2,000 prisoners to flee ahead of advancing Allied troops. The author begins his memoir with a brief description of his prewar years growing up in the city of Lwow, his summer vacations, and his year at the military academy of Lwow, where he had planned to spend the next four years. He then writes of his life as a resistance fighter before being captured. Wiernicki, a gentile, recounts the killing of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau and describes his encounters with Josef Mengele and Heinz Thilo, the infamous SS doctors who conducted medical experiments on prisoners. Wiernicki's memoir, which includes 17 black-and-white photographs, is a haunting and intimate account of the Holocaust, written with an almost unbearable clarity. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 273 pages
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr (Sd); 1 edition (November 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815607229
• ISBN-13: 978-0815607229
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,448,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The horrors of being incarcerated in Auschwitz, March 17, 2002

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

This review is from: War in the Shadow of Auschwitz: Memoirs of a Polish Resistance Fighter and Survivor of the Death Camps (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust) (Hardcover)

A non-Jew, author John Wiernicki was a Polish partisan and political prisoner who vividly recalls his experienced during World War II and the horrors of being incarcerated in the Auschwitz concentration camp. It was in 1943 that Wernicke as a Polish underground fighter was captured and beaten by the Gestapo, then shipped to Auschwitz. A Gentile, Wernicke's chilling memoir graphically details "life" in that infamous death camp, along with his personal battle to survive both physically and morally in the face of the utter evil that was the Nazi "Final Solution" for its enemies. Especially in the face of current efforts at anti-Semitic revisionism, War In The Shadow Of Auschwitz is a critically important and welcome contribution to the growing library of Holocaust Studies, as well as being recommended for World War II European theater reading lists and reference collections.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Witness., June 13, 2008

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John P. Rooney "John" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: War in the Shadow of Auschwitz: Memoirs of a Polish Resistance Fighter and Survivor of the Death Camps (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust) (Hardcover)

"War In The Shadow Of Auschwitz" by John Wiernicki.
Subtitled: "Memoirs Of A Polish Resistance Fighter And survivor Of the Death Camps". Syracuse University Press, 2001.

In the dry September of 1939, Janusz Wiernicki was a young cadet who had just completed his freshman year at the Military Academy in Lwów, Poland. If the weather had been wet, the German 1939 invasion would have been slowed down, but it was a dry September. The first 88 pages narrate the rapid defeat of Poland and the shock experienced by this young boy as his entire world disintegrates.

His options rapidly diminish. He can not stay at the "manor" of his family; (the Irish would consider his family part of the "Landed Class"). In the woods, he becomes part of a loose organization of Polish Army guerrillas ...Resistance Fighters ... who, it appears, spend their time wandering aimlessly from place to place. There is one "fire fight" where both Germans and Poles take casualties, but, interestingly, most of the time, Janusz is assessing the charms of the various young ladies he encounters. Youth will overcome!

Janusz Wiernicki goes home on leave to visit his relatives and is arrested by the Gestapo as he is just about to return to the Resistance Fighters. Janusz was not successful in hiding his second set of forged identity papers.

The remainder of the book, some 169 pages (or 66%) deals with the witness of Janusz Wiernicki to the inhumanity of the Nazi Germans towards the Poles, towards anyone Slavic, towards the Jews, towards Nazi defined "Untermensch". The author recounts how enforced starvation in the prison camps made food the chief subject of discussion, with the complementary issue being the avoidance of rigorous labor which would hasten starvation. Perhaps Wiernicki survived because his Grandmother was able to send him food packages.

In one instance, Wiernicki used his Grandmother's food to procure a pair of contraband binoculars. Then, the author recounts how he used the binoculars to watch as Hungarian Jews were offloaded from the trains, sorted into the immediate death line and into the line where they would live for a short while more, and the horror of seeing families being sent, left to death, while some were sent, right to life. This eye-witness account is horrifying, but is the heart of this book.

As the war winds down, Wiernicki and his fellow inmates are made to trek from Auschwitz to Buchenwald. At the very end, (of the book and the war), Janusz runs away from the line of prisoners trudging along. The German guards shoot but miss him. He runs and runs. He describes taking a pistol from a young German soldier, a dead young soldier in the side car of a motorcycle. Then he meets with a vehicle bearing the white star of the American Army. Witness.