Customer Reviews

Witness : Images of Auschwitz

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I first saw this book when I was visiting the Holocaust Museum (in Washington) and it was equally disturbing as all the displays/exhibits in the museum. The illustrator is a very talented artist, and the author of the text was very poetic. It's an extremely powerful piece of work, both terrifying and also touching. Specifically, I remember the pictures of the phases of the gas chamber, and the text entitled something like "How Many More?" which was a prayer. An incredible book, but only for mature audiences.

This slim volume contains over forty drawings and paintings done by David Olere. He did these works from personal remembrances of his time at Auschwitz death camp. The text is written by his son, Alexandre, who was not at the camp, but hiding out with his mother.

Olere spent his time in the camp working in the crematorium. He would bring the bodies from the chambers and put them in the ovens. His story is not told as most stories are. His story is told through his pictures and his son's writing. Both are horrific to witness. "Witness" is an important word in this book. Through Olere's art, the reader witnesses what he witnessed. Through Oler's words, the reader becomes a witness. The father and son force the reader to look at the horror, and not turn away.

The images are not for the faint of heart, but the faint of heart should witness this book. Everyone should witness this book. Oler writes that his father died in his eighties but not of a disease. He died from a broken heart when university professors began to deny the Holocaust altogether.

"Witness: Images of Auschwitz" is a small, terrifying book. I suggest it to anyone who thinks we should "get past" the horrors of World War II, and the events of September 11, 2001.

Quote:
"I did not survive to rewrite the history
Of the Second World War
And explain how it came about and why.
I have no idea. I have no opinions.

I survived just to show you what it is like
Every day in the camp.

I say, "What it is like," not how it was.
To me it still is. I am in it.

Every morning I start all over again from
The Hell Train on.

Every night, I struggle for my next breath
Of fresh air."
--page 26

This book is so breath-taking, the art, the feelings portrayed through Mr. Olere's art is undescribable, you must own the book to get 1 % of the feelings being expressed.

David Olere told Auschwitz expert Jean-Claude Pressac in 1981 that the Nazis made sausages out of Jews.

Olere was as bad a liar as he was an artist.

Several of the drawings, along with their captions in this book could only be described as pornographic. He seems obsessed with male sexual domination, and his pictures say much more about his psychology than they do about Birkenau. Several pictures of German officers taking advantage of Jewish girls, and even their mothers, is something he could hardly have witnessed, and if it did occur the Germans would have broken the Nuremberg Law which forbade sex between Jews and Germans.

Badly drawn nonsense from a pervert.

The books images are very very disturbing. I will never be the same, little kids should not see this. Good Lord all the humanity. Please do not read it if you are weak of heart. If you are satomasikist then go right ahead.