Author: Zalmen Gradowski
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022663678X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Get Book
Book Description
"The Last Consolation Vanished is a unique first-person Holocaust account. It is by Zalmen Gradowski, who was one of the Sonderkommandos (special squads) at Auschwitz, a Jew tasked with ushering prisoners into the gas chambers, removing their bodies, salvaging any valuables, and destroying all evidence of their murders. The Sonderkommandos were forcibly recruited by SS men; when they discovered how dreadful the work they were expected to do was, a number of them committed suicide or acted with the aim of being killed by the SS. In spite of their situation, some Sonderkommandos never gave up and attempted to resist in two very interlaced ways: planning an uprising and testifying. Gradowski resisted both ways, and while the rebellion he helped to lead on October 7, 1944, was completely crushed, and Gradowski was murdered in the process, his testimony lives on. Hidden in a metal bottle in the ashes near Crematorium III, Gradowski's two lyrical accounts describe the brutality of the Nazi regime, the process of the assassination of Czech Jews, and the relationship among the men forced to assist in the horrors. But his notebooks are not the detached blow-by-blow series of declarative statements we have come to expect in narratives of this kind. In the midst of daily unimaginable horrors, Gradowski aimed to write beautifully, lyrically, movingly, to create true literature where and when one would least expect to find it. Gradowski wrote in Yiddish, and until now, his full writings have only appeared in French translation. This most exceptional text, accompanied by a preface and postface by Philippe Mesnard and Arnold I. Davidson, will be of enormous value, both in Holocaust scholarship and in continuing the remembrance of the Shoah, for many years to come"--
Author: Zalmen Gradowski
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226833232
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Get Book
Book Description
A unique and haunting first-person Holocaust account by Zalmen Gradowski, a Sonderkommando prisoner killed in Auschwitz. On October 7, 1944, a group of Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz obtained explosives and rebelled against their Nazi murderers. It was a desperate uprising that was defeated by the end of the day. More than four hundred prisoners were killed. Filling a gap in history, The Last Consolation Vanished is the first complete English translation and critical edition of one prisoner’s powerful account of life and death in Auschwitz, written in Yiddish and buried in the ashes near Crematorium III. Zalmen Gradowski was in the Sonderkommando (special squad) at Auschwitz, a Jewish prisoner given the unthinkable task of ushering Jewish deportees into the gas chambers, removing their bodies, salvaging any valuables, transporting their corpses to the crematoria, and destroying all evidence of their murders. Sonderkommandos were forcibly recruited by SS soldiers; when they discovered the horror of their assignment, some of them committed suicide or tried to induce the SS to kill them. Despite their impossible situation, many Sonderkommandos chose to resist in two interlaced ways: planning an uprising and testifying. Gradowski did both, by helping to lead a rebellion and by documenting his experiences. Within 120 scrawled notebook pages, his accounts describe the process of the Holocaust, the relentless brutality of the Nazi regime, the assassination of Czech Jews, the relationships among the community of men forced to assist in this nightmare, and the unbearable separation and death of entire families, including his own. Amid daily unimaginable atrocities, he somehow wrote pages that were literary, sometimes even lyrical—hidden where and when one would least expect to find them. The October 7th rebellion was completely crushed and Gradowski was killed in the process, but his testimony lives on. His extraordinary and moving account, accompanied by a foreword and afterword by Philippe Mesnard and Arnold I. Davidson, is a voice speaking to us from the past on behalf of millions who were silenced. Their story must be shared.
Author: Shlomo Venezia
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745683770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Get Book
Book Description
This is a unique, eye-witness account of everyday life right at the heart of the Nazi extermination machine. Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a ‘Sonderkommando', without realising what this entailed. He soon found himself a member of the ‘special unit' responsible for removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burning their bodies. Dispassionately, he details the grim round of daily tasks, evokes the terror inspired by the man in charge of the crematoria, ‘Angel of Death' Otto Moll, and recounts the attempts made by some of the prisoners to escape, including the revolt of October 1944. It is usual to imagine that none of those who went into the gas chambers at Auschwitz ever emerged to tell their tale - but, as a member of a ‘Sonderkommando', Shlomo Venezia was given this horrific privilege. He knew that, having witnessed the unspeakable, he in turn would probably be eliminated by the SS in case he ever told his tale. He survived: this is his story. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Author: Richard L. Rashke
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252064791
Category : Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Get Book
Book Description
A story reconstructed from the diaries, notes, and memories of the six hundred Jews who revolted, three hundred of whom escaped the death camp Sobibor.
Author: Gideon Greif
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300131984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399
Get Book
Book Description
The "Sonderkommando of "Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted primarily of Jewish prisoners forced by the Germans to facilitate the mass extermination. Though never involved in the killing itself, they were compelled to be "members of staff" of the Nazi death-factory. This book, translated for the first time into English from its original Hebrew, consists of interviews with the very few surviving men who witnessed at first hand the unparalleled horror of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Some of these men had never spoken of their experiences before.
Author: Susan Eischeid
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319310380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 151
Get Book
Book Description
This book explores how the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau has been remembered in both media and popular culture since the end of the Second World War. In particular it focuses on Fania Fenelon’s memoir, Playing for Time (1976), which was subsequently adapted into a film. Since then the publication has become a cornerstone of Holocaust remembrance and scholarship. Susan Eischeid therefore investigates whether it deserves such status, and whether such material can ever be considered reliable source material for historians. Using divergent source material gathered by the author, such as interviews with the other surviving members of the orchestra, this Pivot seeks to shed light on this period of women’s history, and questions how we remember the Holocaust today.
Author: Sybille Steinbacher
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141901012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176
Get Book
Book Description
At the terrible heart of the modern age lies Auschwitz. In a total inversion of earlier hopes about the use of science and technology to improve, extend and protect human life, Auschwitz manipulated the same systems to quite different ends. In Sybille Steinbacher's terse, powerful new book, the reader is led through the process by which something unthinkable to any European in the 1930s had become a sprawling, industrial reality during the course of the world war. How Auschwitz grew and mutated into an entire dreadful city, how both those who managed it and those who were killed by it came to be in Poland in the 1940s, and how it was allowed to happen, is something everyone needs to understand.
Author: Nicholas Chare
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1805393499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 581
Get Book
Book Description
The Sonderkommando—the “special squad” of enslaved Jewish laborers who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau—comprise one of the most fascinating and troubling topics within Holocaust history. As eyewitnesses to and unwilling abettors of the murder of their fellow Jews, they are the object of fierce condemnation even today. Yet it was a group of these seemingly compromised men who carried out the revolt of October 7, 1944, one of the most celebrated acts of Holocaust resistance. This interdisciplinary collection assembles careful investigations into how the Sonderkommando have been represented—by themselves and by others—both during and after the Holocaust.
Author: Dieter Schlesak
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9781429958929
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Get Book
Book Description
Dieter Schlesak's haunting novel The Druggist of Auschwitz—beautifully translated from the German by John Hargraves—is a frighteningly vivid portrayal of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of criminal and victim alike. Adam, known as "the last Jew of Schäßburg," recounts with disturbing clarity his imprisonment at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. Through Adam's fictional narrative and excerpts of actual testimony from the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial of 1963–65, we come to learn of the true-life story of Dr. Victor Capesius, who, despite strong friendships with Jews before the war, quickly aided in and profited from their tragedy once the Nazis came to power. Interspersed with historical research and the author's face-to-face interviews with survivors, the novel follows Capesius from his assignment as the "sorter" of new arrivals at Auschwitz—deciding who will go directly to the gas chamber and who will be used for labor—through his life of lavish wealth after the war to his arrest and eventual trial. Schlesak's seamless incorporation of factual data and testimony—woven into Adam's dreamlike remembrance of a world turned upside down—makes The Druggist of Auschwitz a vital and unique addition to our understanding of the Holocaust.
Author: Yitzhak Arad
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253034477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375
Get Book
Book Description
Under the code name Operation Reinhard, more than one and a half million Jews were murdered between 1942 and 1943 in the concentration camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Unlike more well-known camps, which were used both for slave labor and extermination, these camps existed purely to murder Jews. Few victims survived to tell their stories, and the camps were largely forgotten after they were dismantled in 1943. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps bears eloquent witness to this horrific tragedy. This newly revised and expanded edition includes new material on the history of the Jews under German occupation in Poland; the execution and timing of Operation Reinhard; information about the ghettos in Lublin, Warsaw, Krakow, Radom, and Galicia; and updated numbers of the victims who were murdered during deportations. In addition to documenting the horror of the camps, Yitzhak Arad recounts the stories of those courageous enough to struggle against the Nazis and their "final solution." Arad's work retrieves the experiences of Operation Reinhard's victims and survivors from obscurity and exposes a terrible chapter in humanity's history.
