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Auschwitz, The Nazis and The 'Final Solution'
In this compelling new book, published to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, highly acclaimed author and broadcaster Laurence Rees tells the definitive history of the most notorious Nazi institution of them all. We discover how Auschwitz evolved from a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners into the site of the largest mass murder in history � part death camp, part concentration camp, where around a million Jews were killed.
Rees uses Auschwitz as a window through which to examine the Holocaust in its broader context. He argues that, far from being an aberration, the camp was a uniquely important institution in the Nazi state, one that played a vital role in the 'Final Solution'.
Auschwitz examines the mentality and motivations of the key Nazi decision makers, and perpetrators of appalling crimes speak here for the first time about their actions. Fascinating and disturbing facts have been uncovered � from the operation of a brothel to the corruption that was rife throughout the camp. The book draws on intriguing new documentary material from recently opened Russian archives, which will challenge many previously accepted arguments.
Auschwitz lay at the hub of a complex system of extermination that spread throughout Nazi Europe. Rees addresses uncomfortable questions, such as why so few countries under Nazi occupation protected their Jews and why the Allies did little directly to prevent the killing even after they knew about the existence of the camp.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 2, 2005
636 people are currently reading
24.1k people want to read
About the author
Laurence Rees
37books364followersIn addition to writing, Rees has also produced films about World War II for the BBC.
In New York in January 2009, Laurence was presented with the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award� by ‘History Makers�, the worldwide congress of History and Current Affairs programme makers
In 2011 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (DUniv) by The Open University(UK).
In New York in January 2009, Laurence was presented with the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award� by ‘History Makers�, the worldwide congress of History and Current Affairs programme makers
In 2011 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (DUniv) by The Open University(UK).
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March 6, 2020
I felt that this was an extremely well-researched and well-written account of this episode of the cruelest man has ever been to one's fellow humans. It is the harrowing account of the creation of Auschwitz (with notable parentheses about the other camps and the overall context in which they were created and were operated). I visited Auschwitz days after finishing the book and felt prepared for the horrors that awaited me and also felt I got much more out of the experience since I felt relatively informed. I would highly recommend this book for anyone planning to visit the Lagers and would highly recommend the 6h tour in English and the amazing tour guide: Borgusia!
Rees' book has a fabulous introduction which gives the context that led to the horror and its consequences and is extremely well-written. The book is the result of hundreds of interviews performed by the author and his team during the research leading to a BBC documentary and this book of survivors, SS officers, Polish residents of Oświęcim, Poland, and others. So, it is based on first hand oral evidence as well as research into the 10% of archives not destroyed by the Nazis during their flight, documents taken back to Russia by the victorious army, etc. I would further recommend that even if you do not wish to read the entire book, that the Introduction is truly an important standalone document including many insights such as Goebbels believed that it was always preferable to reinforce the existing prejudice of the audience rather than try to change someone's mind. (p. 17) This made me think of the current rallies around Trumpism and how now effort by the maga(t)s is ever made to convince, only to validate and terrify.
The book then starts with the origins of the Holocaust. One must bear in mind that the economy of the Nazi empire was based on enslaving the non-Aryan populations and so concentration camps such as Dachau were used for political prisoners (Socialists, journalists, professors on the left, etc as well as prisoners of war). The concept of Death Camps (of which there were four including, of course, Auschwitz, came in 1942 and following. The techniques were adapted from experiences on euthanasia on patients in insane asylums and retirement communities. Germany needed "useful" citizens to build their future and they proceeded to eliminate those they felt were dead weight. It is also important to point out that there were tens (and not hundreds or even thousands) of homosexuals sent to Auschwitz for "re-education" because the sexual act itself was not the real issue, it was the necessity for Aryans to reproduce and create the next generations of Nazis for the empire - so it was not a systematic moral imperative but rather a more political, reproduction-related imperative (contrary to most anti-gay initiatives today). In fact, there was a class of children named pipel who were young male prisoners who were servants and quite often sex slaves to SS officers and to Kapos in camp. In this context, Poland and the conquered territory in the Soviet Union was intended to clear a large space for a growing Nazi empire to expand into. In fact, the invasion of the Soviet Union had a specific idea behind it, as illustrated by this quote from Himmler just before the operation Barbarossa in 1941 was started:'The purpose of the Russian campaign [is] to decimate the Slavic population by 30 millions.' (p. 69). The region around Krakow happened to be in the center of the projected empire which would stretch from the Pyrennees and the Atlantic Ocean to the Volga.
The next chapter, Orders and Initiatives is about how Commandant Rudolf Hoess built Auschwitz. He had been a guard at Dachau before the assignment to convert the marshland around Oświęcim, Poland and the existing Polish army site there into a detainment camp. From Feb 27, 1942, experimentation at The Little Red House on Birkenau was started - the first crematorium. The Poles living the the area were ejected from their homes and pushed out of the region. Any resistants were murdered or imprisoned in Auschwitz. In fact, the initial population of the camp was Russian and Polish POWs. Jewish prisoners started arriving in 1943. A total of 1.1M people were killed at Auschwitz in the gas chambers, via exhaustion or execution of which 1 million were Jews.
The Factories of Death chapter describes the rapid ramp up of the killing capacities towards the end of 1943 and early 1944 as well as the fate of the 69000 French Jews (the 3rd largest number of murders committed during the Holocaust at Auschwitz after the Hungarians (~450k) and the Poles (300k)) and as someone living in France, this was particularly difficult to read for me.
One interesting piece here (in light of current US ICE policy on the border): Even Hoess observed how families in Auschwitz wanted to stay together at all costs. Although the selection process separated men from women, husbands from wives, the Nazis soon learnt that is was almost always counter to their own interests to separate mothers forcibly from their children. (p. 168) So, in this sense, the ICE policy of separating mothers and children is intentionally cruel and reading that it was even a step that even the Nazis refused to take was shocking to say the least.
In another chapter, Rees talks about the widespread corruption in the camp. Here I learned of 'Canada', the warehouse at Birkenau where all the goods stolen from victims was sorted and stored. This was probably the luckiest place to be assigned as a girl or woman because the prisoners here were able to occasionally get slightly better clothes and larger rations than in other barracks of the camp. The property in Canada (diamonds, gold, watches, coins, dollars, etc) was all the explicit property of the Reich, but the temptation was overpowering to steal and there was an incredibly huge black market (well described in terms of bread as currency in Primo Levy's ) (p. 224) Fritz Klein, one Nazi doctor, was quoted as saying with no remorse "Out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind."
Therefore, from the purist Nazi point of view, Auschwitz and the other death camps were an exercise in health management - facilitating the removal of people who were a burden or a threat to the wellbeing of the state. (p. 229)
It is also in this chapter that the human experiments are described...one day, readers must visit Block 10 to get an idea of exactly how grim and evil this was. The thing to realize is that it was done for profit: Bayer paid 170 Reichmarks for each woman that was killed in experiments on an anaesthetic. Bayer was a division of IG Farber, the company that owned the synthetic rubber plant, Buna, where Primo Levy and Elie Wiesel were imprisoned.
The other gruesome aspect to camp was the brothel in Bloc 24 (page 249), limited to non-Jewish and non-gypsy prisoners, and the common rape in Canada of women working in that block. See page 238.
There are popular books such as which purport to be realistic pictures of life in the camps or which romanticize the relationships between SS and Jewish women in camps. The problem with the former is that there are situations such as witnessing executions which were impossible given the organization at Auschwitz (the executions were committed between Bloc 18 and Bloc 19 against the execution wall and there was no way for a prisoner to observe this.) As for the second, it was exceedingly rare because there was little direct contact between the SS who lived outside the camp walls and the prisoners. The creation of brothels was the reason that Hoess was dismissed from running Auschwitz (temporarily as it would turn out because he was recalled when operations needed to be scaled up in 1944 for the arrival of Hungarian Jews) because the internal Morgen investigation into the camp revealed an unacceptable level of corruption and Hoess was the fall guy.
There were gruesome stories of the roundups, the one from Izbica in Poland where Janek denounces his friend Toivi saying "He's a Jew. Take him." Janek then said goodbye to me in a way that is difficult even now for me to repeat...he said, "Goodbye Toivi. I will see you on a shelf in a soap store." (p. 255). One needs to realize that the remains of cremated prisoners were not actually used for soap, but they were used as fertilizer and the ash fell in the river, so the Nazis were eating and drinking the dead Jews quite literally. That in addition to sleeping on mattresses filled with Jewish women's hair, wearing clothes woven from that same hair, etc. etc. The industrial nature of converting literally millions of humans into compost and industrial products is just appalling and terrifying in this reader's view.
Perhaps the most evil part of the book, the Frenzied Killing chapter, is where the Sonderkommando are described. These are the unfortunate prisoners - often Greeks or Ukranians - who were to strip the bodies of the dead in the gas chambers, search orifices for valuables, and cut off dead women's hair before transporting the bodies to elevators up to the crematoria. There were 900 of these workers in 1944. There was a special exhibit during my visit to Auschwitz in February 2020 about the Sonderkommando and I cannot describe how horrific the scenes and testimonies were. Here the revolt of the Sonderkommando on October 7, 1944 is described in which crematorium 3 was destroyed but at the cost of over 460 prisoners shot and executed.
The last chapter, Liberation and Retribution, describes what happened after Jan 27, 1945 and it was particularly galling to read that over 85% of SS that committed murder at Auschwitz and other death camps went unpunished. This is a fact that Primo Levy also bemoaned as it was done as a political consideration and was truly another injustice for the victims. To think Doktor Josef Mengele, who was the notorious doctor of Block 10 and who as a non-soldier did not have the underarm tattoo of the SS and therefore escaped and was aided by the Vatican to escape to Argentina, dying of a stroke while peaceably swimming in the ocean in Brazil.
This is truly an essential book on the most horrific incident in human history. One of many horrific events. One wonders whether humans will ever evolve beyond this kind of brutality, but the rise of Nazism in the 21st century seems to give rise to skepticism in that regard.
By their crime the Nazis brought into the world an awareness of what educated, technologically advanced human beings can do, as long as they possess a cold heart. Once allowed into the world, knowledge of what they did must not be unlearnt. It lies there - ugly, inert, waiting to be rediscovered by each new generation. A warning for us, and for those who will come after. (p. 375)
Fino's Reviews of Books about the Holocaust
Nonfiction:
If This Is A Man/The Truce by Primo Levy
The Periodic Table by Primo Levy
The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levy
The Night by Elie Wiesel
Auschwitz by Laurence Rees
Fiction:
The Tatooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris
Travel to Krakow to visit Auschwitz:
Krakow:City Guide [Blue Guides]
Rees' book has a fabulous introduction which gives the context that led to the horror and its consequences and is extremely well-written. The book is the result of hundreds of interviews performed by the author and his team during the research leading to a BBC documentary and this book of survivors, SS officers, Polish residents of Oświęcim, Poland, and others. So, it is based on first hand oral evidence as well as research into the 10% of archives not destroyed by the Nazis during their flight, documents taken back to Russia by the victorious army, etc. I would further recommend that even if you do not wish to read the entire book, that the Introduction is truly an important standalone document including many insights such as Goebbels believed that it was always preferable to reinforce the existing prejudice of the audience rather than try to change someone's mind. (p. 17) This made me think of the current rallies around Trumpism and how now effort by the maga(t)s is ever made to convince, only to validate and terrify.
The book then starts with the origins of the Holocaust. One must bear in mind that the economy of the Nazi empire was based on enslaving the non-Aryan populations and so concentration camps such as Dachau were used for political prisoners (Socialists, journalists, professors on the left, etc as well as prisoners of war). The concept of Death Camps (of which there were four including, of course, Auschwitz, came in 1942 and following. The techniques were adapted from experiences on euthanasia on patients in insane asylums and retirement communities. Germany needed "useful" citizens to build their future and they proceeded to eliminate those they felt were dead weight. It is also important to point out that there were tens (and not hundreds or even thousands) of homosexuals sent to Auschwitz for "re-education" because the sexual act itself was not the real issue, it was the necessity for Aryans to reproduce and create the next generations of Nazis for the empire - so it was not a systematic moral imperative but rather a more political, reproduction-related imperative (contrary to most anti-gay initiatives today). In fact, there was a class of children named pipel who were young male prisoners who were servants and quite often sex slaves to SS officers and to Kapos in camp. In this context, Poland and the conquered territory in the Soviet Union was intended to clear a large space for a growing Nazi empire to expand into. In fact, the invasion of the Soviet Union had a specific idea behind it, as illustrated by this quote from Himmler just before the operation Barbarossa in 1941 was started:'The purpose of the Russian campaign [is] to decimate the Slavic population by 30 millions.' (p. 69). The region around Krakow happened to be in the center of the projected empire which would stretch from the Pyrennees and the Atlantic Ocean to the Volga.
The next chapter, Orders and Initiatives is about how Commandant Rudolf Hoess built Auschwitz. He had been a guard at Dachau before the assignment to convert the marshland around Oświęcim, Poland and the existing Polish army site there into a detainment camp. From Feb 27, 1942, experimentation at The Little Red House on Birkenau was started - the first crematorium. The Poles living the the area were ejected from their homes and pushed out of the region. Any resistants were murdered or imprisoned in Auschwitz. In fact, the initial population of the camp was Russian and Polish POWs. Jewish prisoners started arriving in 1943. A total of 1.1M people were killed at Auschwitz in the gas chambers, via exhaustion or execution of which 1 million were Jews.
The Factories of Death chapter describes the rapid ramp up of the killing capacities towards the end of 1943 and early 1944 as well as the fate of the 69000 French Jews (the 3rd largest number of murders committed during the Holocaust at Auschwitz after the Hungarians (~450k) and the Poles (300k)) and as someone living in France, this was particularly difficult to read for me.
One interesting piece here (in light of current US ICE policy on the border): Even Hoess observed how families in Auschwitz wanted to stay together at all costs. Although the selection process separated men from women, husbands from wives, the Nazis soon learnt that is was almost always counter to their own interests to separate mothers forcibly from their children. (p. 168) So, in this sense, the ICE policy of separating mothers and children is intentionally cruel and reading that it was even a step that even the Nazis refused to take was shocking to say the least.
In another chapter, Rees talks about the widespread corruption in the camp. Here I learned of 'Canada', the warehouse at Birkenau where all the goods stolen from victims was sorted and stored. This was probably the luckiest place to be assigned as a girl or woman because the prisoners here were able to occasionally get slightly better clothes and larger rations than in other barracks of the camp. The property in Canada (diamonds, gold, watches, coins, dollars, etc) was all the explicit property of the Reich, but the temptation was overpowering to steal and there was an incredibly huge black market (well described in terms of bread as currency in Primo Levy's ) (p. 224) Fritz Klein, one Nazi doctor, was quoted as saying with no remorse "Out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind."
Therefore, from the purist Nazi point of view, Auschwitz and the other death camps were an exercise in health management - facilitating the removal of people who were a burden or a threat to the wellbeing of the state. (p. 229)
It is also in this chapter that the human experiments are described...one day, readers must visit Block 10 to get an idea of exactly how grim and evil this was. The thing to realize is that it was done for profit: Bayer paid 170 Reichmarks for each woman that was killed in experiments on an anaesthetic. Bayer was a division of IG Farber, the company that owned the synthetic rubber plant, Buna, where Primo Levy and Elie Wiesel were imprisoned.
The other gruesome aspect to camp was the brothel in Bloc 24 (page 249), limited to non-Jewish and non-gypsy prisoners, and the common rape in Canada of women working in that block. See page 238.
There are popular books such as which purport to be realistic pictures of life in the camps or which romanticize the relationships between SS and Jewish women in camps. The problem with the former is that there are situations such as witnessing executions which were impossible given the organization at Auschwitz (the executions were committed between Bloc 18 and Bloc 19 against the execution wall and there was no way for a prisoner to observe this.) As for the second, it was exceedingly rare because there was little direct contact between the SS who lived outside the camp walls and the prisoners. The creation of brothels was the reason that Hoess was dismissed from running Auschwitz (temporarily as it would turn out because he was recalled when operations needed to be scaled up in 1944 for the arrival of Hungarian Jews) because the internal Morgen investigation into the camp revealed an unacceptable level of corruption and Hoess was the fall guy.
There were gruesome stories of the roundups, the one from Izbica in Poland where Janek denounces his friend Toivi saying "He's a Jew. Take him." Janek then said goodbye to me in a way that is difficult even now for me to repeat...he said, "Goodbye Toivi. I will see you on a shelf in a soap store." (p. 255). One needs to realize that the remains of cremated prisoners were not actually used for soap, but they were used as fertilizer and the ash fell in the river, so the Nazis were eating and drinking the dead Jews quite literally. That in addition to sleeping on mattresses filled with Jewish women's hair, wearing clothes woven from that same hair, etc. etc. The industrial nature of converting literally millions of humans into compost and industrial products is just appalling and terrifying in this reader's view.
Perhaps the most evil part of the book, the Frenzied Killing chapter, is where the Sonderkommando are described. These are the unfortunate prisoners - often Greeks or Ukranians - who were to strip the bodies of the dead in the gas chambers, search orifices for valuables, and cut off dead women's hair before transporting the bodies to elevators up to the crematoria. There were 900 of these workers in 1944. There was a special exhibit during my visit to Auschwitz in February 2020 about the Sonderkommando and I cannot describe how horrific the scenes and testimonies were. Here the revolt of the Sonderkommando on October 7, 1944 is described in which crematorium 3 was destroyed but at the cost of over 460 prisoners shot and executed.
The last chapter, Liberation and Retribution, describes what happened after Jan 27, 1945 and it was particularly galling to read that over 85% of SS that committed murder at Auschwitz and other death camps went unpunished. This is a fact that Primo Levy also bemoaned as it was done as a political consideration and was truly another injustice for the victims. To think Doktor Josef Mengele, who was the notorious doctor of Block 10 and who as a non-soldier did not have the underarm tattoo of the SS and therefore escaped and was aided by the Vatican to escape to Argentina, dying of a stroke while peaceably swimming in the ocean in Brazil.
This is truly an essential book on the most horrific incident in human history. One of many horrific events. One wonders whether humans will ever evolve beyond this kind of brutality, but the rise of Nazism in the 21st century seems to give rise to skepticism in that regard.
By their crime the Nazis brought into the world an awareness of what educated, technologically advanced human beings can do, as long as they possess a cold heart. Once allowed into the world, knowledge of what they did must not be unlearnt. It lies there - ugly, inert, waiting to be rediscovered by each new generation. A warning for us, and for those who will come after. (p. 375)
Fino's Reviews of Books about the Holocaust
Nonfiction:
If This Is A Man/The Truce by Primo Levy
The Periodic Table by Primo Levy
The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levy
The Night by Elie Wiesel
Auschwitz by Laurence Rees
Fiction:
The Tatooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris
Travel to Krakow to visit Auschwitz:
Krakow:City Guide [Blue Guides]
July 28, 2020
Να ξεκινήσω λέγοντας πως αυτό το βιβλίο ήταν ένα γερό χαστούκι στον τρόπο με τον οποίο αντιλαμβάνομαι τον κόσμο. Ζούμε πολύ όμορφα μέσα στις τσιχλόφουσκές μας, στην εποχή της αυτοπροβολής, των μέσων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης και των ανέσεών μας, μην έχοντας συνειδητοποιήσει πόσο εύκολα μπορεί όλα να αλλάξουν και πώς μπορεί κάποιος σταδιακά να ενστερνιστεί ως πολιτική πεποίθηση την φυσική εξόντωση ανθρώπων και να δικαιολογεί τις αποτρόπαιες πράξεις του πίσω απο το ''Δεν έφταιγα, εγώ απλώς εκτελούσα διαταγές.''.
Πόσο εύθραστη είναι η ανθρώπινη συμπεριφορά όταν μπαίνει μπροστά το ένστικτο της επιβίωσης και το παιχνίδι της εξουσίας και της υπεροχής.
''Μόνο για ένα πράγμα είμαι σίγουρος - κανένας δεν ξέρει τον εαυτό του. Ο καλός άνθρωπος, αν τον συναντήσεις στο δρόμο και τον ρωτήσεις ''Πού είναι η Νορθ Στριτ'', θα σε συνοδεύσει για μισό τετράγωνο και θα σου δείξει ότι είναι καλός και ευγενικός. Ο ίδιος άνθρωπος κάτω από διαφορετικές συνθήκες μπορεί να γίνει ο χειρότερος σαδιστής. Κανείς δεν ξέρει τον εαυτό του. Όλοι μας μπορούμε να γίνουμε καλοί ή κακοί άνθρωποι κάτω από αυτές τις διαφορετικές συνθήκες. Μερικές φορές όταν κάποιος μου φέρεται πραγματικά καλά, πιάνω τον εαυτό μου να αναρωτιέται: ''Πώς θα ήταν ο ίδιος άνθρωπος στο στρατόπεδο εξόντωσης Σομπιμπόρ;'' !!!
''Όπως το νερό παραμένει υγρό μόνο υπό ένα συγκεκριμένο εύρος θερμοκρασίας και μετατρέπεται σε ατμό ή πάγο πέρα από το εύρος αυτό, έτσι και οι άνθρωποι γίνονται διαφορετικοί όταν βρεθούν σε ακραίες συνθήκες''.
Στο βιβλίο αυτό ο Laurence Rees με σεβασμό, ευαισθησία, αμεροληψία, εντιμότητα και έχοντας κάνει μια άρτια επιστημονική έρευνα, αναλύει ένα από τα πιο ειδεχθή εγκλήματα της ανθρωπότητας, μια μάυρη κηλίδα της ανθρώπινης ιστορίας.
Περιγράφει ουσιαστικά την ιστορία του Άουσβιτς-Μπίρκεναου, του πιο απάνθρωπου θεσμού του ναζ��στικού καθεστώτος, και το πώς ο θεσμός αυτός συνεισέφερε καθοριστικά στην υλοποίηση της ''Τελικής Λύσης''. Πώς εξελίχθηκε σταδιακά από φυλακή πολιτικών κρατουμένων σε ένα χώρο μαζικής εξόντωσης 1,1 εκατομμυρίων ανδρών, γυναικών και παιδιών.
Πέρα από την απλή εξιστόρηση των γεγονότων, το βιβλίο φιλοξενεί αποσπάσματα συνεντεύξεων ανθρώπων που έζησαν εκείνες τις φρικαλεότητες. Αναλύει την ψυχοσύνθεση, τα κίνητρα και το όραμα των ηθικών αυτουργών (σοκάρει το πώς κάποιοι πέθαναν αμετανόητοι δηλώνοντας πως αν χρειαζόταν θα ξαναέκαναν τα ίδια πράγματα) αλλά και τα συναισθήματα των θυμάτων μέσα από τις διηγήσεις σπαρακτικών ιστοριών που με τραγικό τρόπο συνειδητοποιούν ότι ''ο βαθμός της ανθρώπινης αχρειότητας είναι αμέτρητος''.
Στο βιβλίο απορρίπτεται η θεωρία ότι όσα έγιναν ήταν μια απόκλιση της ναζιστικής ιδεολογίας και στοχοποιούνται τα απροκάλυπτα δαρβινικά ιδεώδη του ναζισμού.
''Η άποψη ότι το έγκλημα της εξόντωσης των Εβραίων κατά κάποιον τρόπο επιβλήθηκε από μια ομάδα τρελών σε μια άβουλη Ευρώπη είναι πραγματικά η πιο επικίνδυνη από όλες''.
Τέλος να κλείσω με το μήνυμα που θέλει να περάσει ο συγγραφέας και με το οποίο δεν μπορώ να συμφωνήσω περισσότερο: ''Έχουν υπάρξει πολλές φρικιαστικές πράξεις στο παρελθόν... Έτσι ίσως αντιμετωπίσουμε το Άουσβιτς με τον ίδιο τρόπο. Αυτό δεν πρέπει να συμβεί. Οφείλουμε να κρίνουμε τις συμπεριφορές στο πλαίσιο της εποχής τους. Και αν κρίνουμε το Άουσβιτς και την ''Τελική Λύση'' των ναζί στο πλαίσιο της σύγχρονης ευρωπαϊκής κουλτούρας των μέσων του 20ού αιώνα, δεν μπορούμε παρά να τα χαρακτηρίσουμε ως την πιο ποταπή πράξη στην ιστορία συνολικά. Με το έγκλημά τους οι ναζί έδειξαν στον κόσμο τι μπορούν να κάνουν μορφωμένοι, τεχνολογικά προεγμένοι άνθρωποι, όταν η καρδιά τους είναι σκληρή παγωμένη''.
Το βιβλίο αυτό είναι πολύ ανθρώπινο παρά το απάνθρωπο θέμα που διαπραγματεύεται και πιστεύω πως αξίζει να διαβαστεί από τον καθένα μας...
Πόσο εύθραστη είναι η ανθρώπινη συμπεριφορά όταν μπαίνει μπροστά το ένστικτο της επιβίωσης και το παιχνίδι της εξουσίας και της υπεροχής.
''Μόνο για ένα πράγμα είμαι σίγουρος - κανένας δεν ξέρει τον εαυτό του. Ο καλός άνθρωπος, αν τον συναντήσεις στο δρόμο και τον ρωτήσεις ''Πού είναι η Νορθ Στριτ'', θα σε συνοδεύσει για μισό τετράγωνο και θα σου δείξει ότι είναι καλός και ευγενικός. Ο ίδιος άνθρωπος κάτω από διαφορετικές συνθήκες μπορεί να γίνει ο χειρότερος σαδιστής. Κανείς δεν ξέρει τον εαυτό του. Όλοι μας μπορούμε να γίνουμε καλοί ή κακοί άνθρωποι κάτω από αυτές τις διαφορετικές συνθήκες. Μερικές φορές όταν κάποιος μου φέρεται πραγματικά καλά, πιάνω τον εαυτό μου να αναρωτιέται: ''Πώς θα ήταν ο ίδιος άνθρωπος στο στρατόπεδο εξόντωσης Σομπιμπόρ;'' !!!
''Όπως το νερό παραμένει υγρό μόνο υπό ένα συγκεκριμένο εύρος θερμοκρασίας και μετατρέπεται σε ατμό ή πάγο πέρα από το εύρος αυτό, έτσι και οι άνθρωποι γίνονται διαφορετικοί όταν βρεθούν σε ακραίες συνθήκες''.
Στο βιβλίο αυτό ο Laurence Rees με σεβασμό, ευαισθησία, αμεροληψία, εντιμότητα και έχοντας κάνει μια άρτια επιστημονική έρευνα, αναλύει ένα από τα πιο ειδεχθή εγκλήματα της ανθρωπότητας, μια μάυρη κηλίδα της ανθρώπινης ιστορίας.
Περιγράφει ουσιαστικά την ιστορία του Άουσβιτς-Μπίρκεναου, του πιο απάνθρωπου θεσμού του ναζ��στικού καθεστώτος, και το πώς ο θεσμός αυτός συνεισέφερε καθοριστικά στην υλοποίηση της ''Τελικής Λύσης''. Πώς εξελίχθηκε σταδιακά από φυλακή πολιτικών κρατουμένων σε ένα χώρο μαζικής εξόντωσης 1,1 εκατομμυρίων ανδρών, γυναικών και παιδιών.
Πέρα από την απλή εξιστόρηση των γεγονότων, το βιβλίο φιλοξενεί αποσπάσματα συνεντεύξεων ανθρώπων που έζησαν εκείνες τις φρικαλεότητες. Αναλύει την ψυχοσύνθεση, τα κίνητρα και το όραμα των ηθικών αυτουργών (σοκάρει το πώς κάποιοι πέθαναν αμετανόητοι δηλώνοντας πως αν χρειαζόταν θα ξαναέκαναν τα ίδια πράγματα) αλλά και τα συναισθήματα των θυμάτων μέσα από τις διηγήσεις σπαρακτικών ιστοριών που με τραγικό τρόπο συνειδητοποιούν ότι ''ο βαθμός της ανθρώπινης αχρειότητας είναι αμέτρητος''.
Στο βιβλίο απορρίπτεται η θεωρία ότι όσα έγιναν ήταν μια απόκλιση της ναζιστικής ιδεολογίας και στοχοποιούνται τα απροκάλυπτα δαρβινικά ιδεώδη του ναζισμού.
''Η άποψη ότι το έγκλημα της εξόντωσης των Εβραίων κατά κάποιον τρόπο επιβλήθηκε από μια ομάδα τρελών σε μια άβουλη Ευρώπη είναι πραγματικά η πιο επικίνδυνη από όλες''.
Τέλος να κλείσω με το μήνυμα που θέλει να περάσει ο συγγραφέας και με το οποίο δεν μπορώ να συμφωνήσω περισσότερο: ''Έχουν υπάρξει πολλές φρικιαστικές πράξεις στο παρελθόν... Έτσι ίσως αντιμετωπίσουμε το Άουσβιτς με τον ίδιο τρόπο. Αυτό δεν πρέπει να συμβεί. Οφείλουμε να κρίνουμε τις συμπεριφορές στο πλαίσιο της εποχής τους. Και αν κρίνουμε το Άουσβιτς και την ''Τελική Λύση'' των ναζί στο πλαίσιο της σύγχρονης ευρωπαϊκής κουλτούρας των μέσων του 20ού αιώνα, δεν μπορούμε παρά να τα χαρακτηρίσουμε ως την πιο ποταπή πράξη στην ιστορία συνολικά. Με το έγκλημά τους οι ναζί έδειξαν στον κόσμο τι μπορούν να κάνουν μορφωμένοι, τεχνολογικά προεγμένοι άνθρωποι, όταν η καρδιά τους είναι σκληρή παγωμένη''.
Το βιβλίο αυτό είναι πολύ ανθρώπινο παρά το απάνθρωπο θέμα που διαπραγματεύεται και πιστεύω πως αξίζει να διαβαστεί από τον καθένα μας...
August 23, 2012
THE FLOWERS IN THE WINDOWBOX
When you read about the Nazis there's always this strange contradiction - their famous obsession with order, with following orders, with classification, rules, hierarchy, and all of that, is superimposed upon a regime which was most of the time in chaos, ministries competing with other ministries, states (the SS) within states; for many really big projects there was a culture of no written orders, and in many cases major policies were made up on the spot.
The answer to this puzzle is : the Nazi regime was radical. It was specifically not democratic and consensual. If a decision was reached at the top it was of no concern if it contradicted any other policy, or even if it was frankly impossible. If subordinates raised any practical objections they were told "You will find a way". This led to, for instance, Rudolph Hoess, newly appointed commandant of Auschwitz, driving around the villages of southern Poland scavenging and stealing any building materials he could find in order to get some barracks built in 1940.
In Auschwitz chaos and efficiency were fused together. It was never one thing, not even one camp. It was originally a labour camp for Polish political prisoners and some German criminals; then came the Russian prisoners of war. And it grew and grew. Eventually "Auschwitz" was an area of about 25 square miles. There were two big camps, Auschwitz I and Birkenau, then there were 43 sub-camps which appeared as industries such as I G Farben and Bayer moved in and constructed nearby factories and paid the SS for slave labour. (Bayer is one of the companies I now indirectly work for, it's one of our big pharma clients). Then some low level gassing experiments began, which in time led to huge purpose-built crematoriums with built-in gas chambers being constructed in Birkenau, and we arrive at this summary :
1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz
1.1 million died there.
1 million of them were Jews.
The non-Jews were made up of 70,000 Poles, 20,000 Roma and 10,000 Russians.
WE HAVE CARRIED OUT THIS MOST DIFFICULT TASK FOR THE LOVE OF OUR PEOPLE*
The first part of the Holocaust was wild and anarchic. The Einsatzgruppen squads murdered Jews just behind the front line in the USSR and they did this by the crudest of methods, they lined the people up, men, women and children, and shot them, and threw them in ditches or pits. This was horrible work, it was day in and day out. It quickly destroyed the morale of the soldiers. They couldn't take it. There had to be a better way. And there was. The Aktion T4 (euthenasia) programme for the eradication of "incurables" in Germany had started in September 1939 and had already concluded that gassing these victims was more efficient than administering lethal injections. By the end of 1941 about 70,000 "incurables" had been killed at six different centres. It was logical to try a few gassing experiments on prisoners in concentration camps and it did seem to work pretty well once they found something better than carbon monoxide (which took too long to kill people). The SS liked the gassing concept because it insulated the SS soldier from the actual killing, that was the main point. Germans did not have to put up with all the screaming and misery or have to look at the dead bodies. All that was the job of the Sonderkommando, which were recruited from the camp inmates. Let the Jews kill themselves. Let the Jews pull out their own gold teeth. Let the Jews incinerate themselves.
So three extermination camps were constructed, and these are amazingly unfamous � Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. They were specifically for killing, they did not use any prisoners for slave labour, they were located far away from population centres, way out in the Polish countryside. And they were small. They really should be more famous, because they were extremely efficient.
Belzec � operated from March 42 to June 43. People killed there : approximately 600,000
Sobibor � operated march 42 to October 43. People killed there : between 200, 000 and 250,000
Treblinka � operated between July 42 and August 43. People killed there : approximately 870,000
THIS IS AN UNWRITTEN AND NEVER-TO-BE-WRITTEN PAGE OF GLORY IN OUR HISTORY*
After these camps were closed their existence was removed from the face of the earth. The land was ploughed, and turned back into farmland, a family was found to live there and tell anyone who asked that they had been there for generations.
It was as if the Nazis knew they had committed a crime and they were hiding it. In the same way they always wreathed their official documents about the final solution in euphemism and opaque bureaucracy. Why? In exactly the same way that a psychopath like Ted Bundy or Peter Sutcliffe would carefully cover up their murders. Neither the Nazis, Ted Bundy or Peter Sutcliffe believed for a moment that what they had done was wrong. Not at all. But they knew that other less enlightened people did think it was wrong**. In the Nazis case, even other Germans might think it was wrong. Because they just hadn't had enough time to come to the understanding of this awful necessity, as Himmler might have put it.
Even Hitler had to get to a point where he realised, after years of fulminating about smashing the Jews, crushing them, destroying them, that he could actually physically kill them all. He'd been trying to get them to disappear for years � ship them all to Madagascar was one ridiculous idea � but that hadn't meant actually killing them until 1941.
TO HAVE SEEN THIS THROUGH AND� TO HAVE REMAINED DECENT *
First they drove the prisoners from the cattle trucks to the gas chambers with whips and dogs. That also proved to be distressing for all concerned. So they realised that treating the arrivals with cool efficiency, even courtesy, made the whole process so much easier. They also discovered that it was no problem to separate the men from the women but it was counter-productive to try to separate the women from their children. At Treblinka they rigged up a fake jolly country railway station complete with welcoming band playing popular marches and light classical pieces, nothing too heavy. Easy does it.
STUFF I DID NOT KNOW # 1
DID YOU KNOW THERE WAS A BROTHEL AT AUSCHWITZ?
There was a hierarchy of prisoners. At the bottom were the Jews considered unfit for work. They were killed. In the middle were the Jews, Russians and Poles who were considered fit for being worked to death. At the top were kapos and German prisoners who had specialist jobs. For these, Hoess set up a brothel in August 1943. The deniers have jumped on this bizarre fact � a death camp with a brothel? Come off it. Proves it was an okay place really. There were no gas chambers. And so on.
STUFF I DID NOT KNOW #2
Jews living in the United Kingdom were handed over to the Nazis for deportation to concentration camps. This was a miserable discovery. What happened was that the British government decided that the Channel islands were useless and would not be defended. These are islands between Britain and France which are part of Great Britain. A lot of Islanders decamped for the mainland but a lot didn't. The German army occupied the islands in summer 1940 without a single shot being fired. Then they rolled out their Jew-hating policies. Now, the Nazis also hated Freemasons. A not so well-known fact. And they wanted to deport all Jews and all Freemasons. The islanders kicked up a huge protest about the masons, because the Channel Islands is a hotbed of masonry. But they gave up the handful (under ten) of Jews without much of a murmer (not that they could have done anything).
STUFF I DID NOT KNOW #3
There's a huge, huge debate about whether the Allies could have ameliorated the suffering of the Jews by bombing Auschwitz. Books, essays, letters to the editor, this has been going on a while. It's the hectic part of a wider debate about what did the Allies know about the Holocaust and when did they know it. Rees slashes through the nonsense. He says � 1) the Allies knew about the final solution by late 42/early 43; 2) there was nothing they could have done which would have changed anything, either for Auschwitz specifically or anywhere else. But what about this damning quote from Anthony Eden during discussions in Washington in March 1943 about Hungarian Jews (all of whom were later murdered in Auschwitz) � he said it was important
to move very cautiously about offering to take all the Jews out of a country � if we do that then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make similar efforts in Poland and Germany. Hitler may well take us up on any such offer and there are simply not enough ships and means of transportation to handle them. (p312)
By 1943 Hitler had decided on physical liquidation, but if the offer to take all Jews had been made in 1941, then � maybe, maybe � Hitler would have agreed. You know, I don't want to think about that.
THIS BOOK
It's pretty good, very readable, but the first half is always turning into a history of the Final Solution and not a history of Auschwitz. Once a couple of German companies are namechecked they don't rate any further analysis. Whereas Rees devotes 13 pages to the revolt at Sobibor and eight pages to the way that Denmark protected its Jews. Both of these interesting stories have nothing to do with Auschwitz. I wanted to know much more about the insidious, repulsive morality of the exploitation of slave labour by big German industry.
THE MORAL QUAGMIRE OF YOUR WAR CRIMES VS. MY WAR CRIMES
British Air Staff paper, dated September 23, 1941:
The ultimate aim of an attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this, we must achieve two things: first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim, is therefore, twofold, namely, to produce (i) destruction and (ii) fear of death
Oscar Groening, ex-SS, who worked at Auschwitz and was interviewed for this book, commented:
We saw how bombs were dropped on Germany, and women and children died in firestorms. We saw this and said "This is a war that is being led in this way by both sides".
Rees spends a few frantic paragraphs explaining that there was no moral equivalent at all between the nazis gassing women and children and the Allies bombing and burning women and children. It's a false comparison. But he still says the comparison is "emotionally disturbing" � one reason being that so many raised objections to the carpet bombing of German towns and cities at the time - including Churchill! The bombing campaign killed a minimum of 305,000 German civilians. And the comparison works � the bombers were distanced completely from the horror they unleashed, as the SS guards were insulated from the gassings by the use of Jews to do all the disgusting work for them.
Well, no.
GERANIUMS
As I mentioned, the SS found that shepherding the Jews to the gas chambers worked much better than brutality, and one nice touch, I think you'll agree, was that someone had the idea of putting windowboxes full of geraniums outside the crematoriums. There weren't any flowers anywhere else in Auschwitz, but here, where the Jews were killed, there were lots of windowboxes full of geraniums.
_______________________
* from a speech by Himmler to the SS, 6 October 1943
**Hence, the person who doesn't even realise that other people will think what he has done is a crime is insane.
July 14, 2008
My favorite quote I now live by came from this book....
when a survivor was asked how he made it through Auschwitz, he replied "worse things have happened to better people". I think twice about my woes when I think of his response...
when a survivor was asked how he made it through Auschwitz, he replied "worse things have happened to better people". I think twice about my woes when I think of his response...
November 16, 2021
I am having difficulty writing a review of this book without getting sucked down into a spiral of sputtering despair. So I will try to keep it short. There is plenty of information about Auschwitz available on the market; so what makes this book “new�? The simple answer are the interviews. Rees has personally spoken to both survivors and perpetrators, and weaves their individual stories into a larger narrative of the camp. In this way, the book becomes almost as much a psychological study as it is a history.
Judged purely as a history, this book is good but not superlative. Rees does an admirable job of covering the broad sweep of the camp’s history, including many unexpected (and usually quite disturbing) details. However, the book’s brevity precludes any detailed examination, and I was often left wanting to learn more about certain aspects of the camp. Curiously, Rees also includes many stories that are outside the purported purview of the book—such as the story of how the citizens of Britain’s Channel Islands reacted to the Nazi’s persecution of the Jews—stories that are usually quite compelling, but which seem difficult to justify including in a book of this size.
It is as an examination of inmates and perpetrators that the book is most valuable. One conclusion is that the common Nazi excuse—that they were merely acting under orders—does not hold water. Indeed, Rees shows that the National Socialist organization did not have to rely on violent coercion in order to motivate its members; the majority of men in leadership positions were genuine believers in the ideology. This certainly describes Rudolf Höss, the camp commandant. Another conclusion, even more unsettling, is that people can change—not just superficially, but fundamentally—when put under extreme conditions. As one survivor put it:
Yet, for me, the book’s defining character is Oskar Groening. He was a low-level SS officer whose job at the camp was to count the money of incoming (and usually executed) prisoners. He is memorable precisely because he is so ordinary: he worked at a bank before the war and at a glass factory afterwards, leading a quiet life. Indeed, he disliked the violence and bloodshed of the camp—not on moral grounds, but because it sickened him. Nevertheless, he worked diligently at Auschwitz for years, counting up foreign currencies with hardly a spot on his conscience. Hannah Arendt was undoubtedly wrong in applying the term, ‘the banality of evil,� to Adolf Eichmann; but it fits Groening like a glove. For him, Auschwitz was just a job—and a rather cushy one at that.
Indeed, if there is one general takeaway from this history, it is that only the most strong-willed of individuals can rise above their moral climate. Most people (and I am thinking of perpetrators, not victims here) simply go along with prevailing attitudes. There were plenty of ideologically committed Nazis, such as Höss; and there were probably many Groenings, who just wanted a stable job. But there is no record of a single SS officer deserting or refusing to serve at Auschwitz on moral grounds. Indeed, the most disturbing thing of all is that, without exception, none of the former perpetrators interviewed by Rees feel much, if any, remorse. Groening was finally motivated to speak about his experiences, in his old age, not because of lingering guilt, but because he encountered some Holocaust deniers (he wanted to assure them that it was real).
Though it may seem off topic, Rees includes a lengthy section on the Danish resistance to Nazi persecution, which forms a sharp contrast to the many stories of shameful cooperation (for example, by the French, the Hungarians, the Channel Islanders). But he does so to make an important point: in all of these cases, individual behavior seems to be largely a consequence of cultural and social influences. Just as there is no evidence that every Nazi was a true sociopath, so is there no reason to believe everyone in Copenhagen was a born angel. Indeed, as Rees emphasizes again and again, we are talking about people who, in other circumstances, would have been quite ordinary. Yet this is very disturbing, since it seems to exonerate evil doers while depriving the virtuous of their dues. This is a paradox of human behavior: only individuals can be held morally accountable, and yet individuals so often go along with their group. So if the Danes are ordinary as individuals, what explains their extraordinarily praiseworthy actions in this circumstance?
I don’t have the answer. All I can say that few books will make you feel less optimistic about our species than this one. Yet it is important to learn about Auschwitz for that very reason.
Judged purely as a history, this book is good but not superlative. Rees does an admirable job of covering the broad sweep of the camp’s history, including many unexpected (and usually quite disturbing) details. However, the book’s brevity precludes any detailed examination, and I was often left wanting to learn more about certain aspects of the camp. Curiously, Rees also includes many stories that are outside the purported purview of the book—such as the story of how the citizens of Britain’s Channel Islands reacted to the Nazi’s persecution of the Jews—stories that are usually quite compelling, but which seem difficult to justify including in a book of this size.
It is as an examination of inmates and perpetrators that the book is most valuable. One conclusion is that the common Nazi excuse—that they were merely acting under orders—does not hold water. Indeed, Rees shows that the National Socialist organization did not have to rely on violent coercion in order to motivate its members; the majority of men in leadership positions were genuine believers in the ideology. This certainly describes Rudolf Höss, the camp commandant. Another conclusion, even more unsettling, is that people can change—not just superficially, but fundamentally—when put under extreme conditions. As one survivor put it:
People asked me, ‘What did you learn?� and I think I’m only sure of one thing—nobody knows themselves. The nice person on the street, you ask him, ‘Where is North Street?� and he goes with you half a block and shows you, and is nice and kind. That same person in a different situation could be the worst sadist. Nobody knows themselves.
Yet, for me, the book’s defining character is Oskar Groening. He was a low-level SS officer whose job at the camp was to count the money of incoming (and usually executed) prisoners. He is memorable precisely because he is so ordinary: he worked at a bank before the war and at a glass factory afterwards, leading a quiet life. Indeed, he disliked the violence and bloodshed of the camp—not on moral grounds, but because it sickened him. Nevertheless, he worked diligently at Auschwitz for years, counting up foreign currencies with hardly a spot on his conscience. Hannah Arendt was undoubtedly wrong in applying the term, ‘the banality of evil,� to Adolf Eichmann; but it fits Groening like a glove. For him, Auschwitz was just a job—and a rather cushy one at that.
Indeed, if there is one general takeaway from this history, it is that only the most strong-willed of individuals can rise above their moral climate. Most people (and I am thinking of perpetrators, not victims here) simply go along with prevailing attitudes. There were plenty of ideologically committed Nazis, such as Höss; and there were probably many Groenings, who just wanted a stable job. But there is no record of a single SS officer deserting or refusing to serve at Auschwitz on moral grounds. Indeed, the most disturbing thing of all is that, without exception, none of the former perpetrators interviewed by Rees feel much, if any, remorse. Groening was finally motivated to speak about his experiences, in his old age, not because of lingering guilt, but because he encountered some Holocaust deniers (he wanted to assure them that it was real).
Though it may seem off topic, Rees includes a lengthy section on the Danish resistance to Nazi persecution, which forms a sharp contrast to the many stories of shameful cooperation (for example, by the French, the Hungarians, the Channel Islanders). But he does so to make an important point: in all of these cases, individual behavior seems to be largely a consequence of cultural and social influences. Just as there is no evidence that every Nazi was a true sociopath, so is there no reason to believe everyone in Copenhagen was a born angel. Indeed, as Rees emphasizes again and again, we are talking about people who, in other circumstances, would have been quite ordinary. Yet this is very disturbing, since it seems to exonerate evil doers while depriving the virtuous of their dues. This is a paradox of human behavior: only individuals can be held morally accountable, and yet individuals so often go along with their group. So if the Danes are ordinary as individuals, what explains their extraordinarily praiseworthy actions in this circumstance?
I don’t have the answer. All I can say that few books will make you feel less optimistic about our species than this one. Yet it is important to learn about Auschwitz for that very reason.
June 6, 2018
Laurence Rees traces the history of Auschwitz, and uses it as a lens to view the progression of the wider Holocaust. It’s hard to describe something like this as “enjoyable� but it’s a very interesting - and in my view necessary - book.
February 6, 2017
"The real bloodbath was about to begin."
One word for it,
Excruciating.
I don't know what else to say, I'm too dumbfounded to speak.
"Having suffered in the camp himself for nearly two years, Paczyńński felt no great emotion as he saw these people go to their deaths: “One becomes indifferent. Today you go, tomorrow I will go. You become indifferent. A human being can get used to anything.�
One word for it,
Excruciating.
I don't know what else to say, I'm too dumbfounded to speak.
"Having suffered in the camp himself for nearly two years, Paczyńński felt no great emotion as he saw these people go to their deaths: “One becomes indifferent. Today you go, tomorrow I will go. You become indifferent. A human being can get used to anything.�
March 9, 2021
Horrific and banal. Don't look away, please read it.
"In this history, suffering is almost never redemptive."
"You go to bed and you are alive, and by the morning you are dead. It was death, death, death. Death at night, death in the morning, death in the afternoon. There was death all the time."
"Rudolf Hoess emphasized in his memoirs how the key to successful mass murder on this scale was to conduct the whole process in an atmosphere of great calm."
"Auschwitz prisoners were even ‘sold� to the Bayer company, part of I.G. Farben, as human guinea pigs for the testing of new drugs. One of the communications from Bayer to the Auschwitz authorities states that: ‘The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price."
"As she looked up from breaking the ice on the surface of the river, she saw a little girl about her own age on the other side of the bank. She was dressed in beautiful clothes, with carefully braided hair decorated with ribbons, and carried a school bag. It was an ‘almost unbelievable� sight to Eva, wearing rags and swarming with lice, who stood and stared at her. ‘This was my first realization since we arrived in Auschwitz,� she says, ‘that there was a world out there with children who looked like children, and who went to school."
"Actually, one of the things that I missed most after the war when we got back was that I desperately needed hugs and kisses and I never got any. And so when I lecture students I tell them, “When you go home this afternoon, please go and give your parents an extra hug and an extra kiss for all of us children who survived the camp and who had no one to hug and kiss."
"A conviction and sentence, however minimal, for every SS man who was there would have sent a clear message for the future. It did not happen. Around 85 per cent of the SS who served at Auschwitz and survived the war escaped scot-free."
"In this history, suffering is almost never redemptive."
"You go to bed and you are alive, and by the morning you are dead. It was death, death, death. Death at night, death in the morning, death in the afternoon. There was death all the time."
"Rudolf Hoess emphasized in his memoirs how the key to successful mass murder on this scale was to conduct the whole process in an atmosphere of great calm."
"Auschwitz prisoners were even ‘sold� to the Bayer company, part of I.G. Farben, as human guinea pigs for the testing of new drugs. One of the communications from Bayer to the Auschwitz authorities states that: ‘The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price."
"As she looked up from breaking the ice on the surface of the river, she saw a little girl about her own age on the other side of the bank. She was dressed in beautiful clothes, with carefully braided hair decorated with ribbons, and carried a school bag. It was an ‘almost unbelievable� sight to Eva, wearing rags and swarming with lice, who stood and stared at her. ‘This was my first realization since we arrived in Auschwitz,� she says, ‘that there was a world out there with children who looked like children, and who went to school."
"Actually, one of the things that I missed most after the war when we got back was that I desperately needed hugs and kisses and I never got any. And so when I lecture students I tell them, “When you go home this afternoon, please go and give your parents an extra hug and an extra kiss for all of us children who survived the camp and who had no one to hug and kiss."
"A conviction and sentence, however minimal, for every SS man who was there would have sent a clear message for the future. It did not happen. Around 85 per cent of the SS who served at Auschwitz and survived the war escaped scot-free."
October 18, 2014
When it comes to complex topics like the Holocaust, I think it's helpful to read from a number of sources. And often, the best books are those that offer us something new, either by presenting a piece of the puzzle that was missing or perhaps adding additional perspective that affords us a new way of looking at an old piece, allowing us to better place it.
I'm not sure I can do a book like this justice in a review other than to say it was an excellent compliment to other readings I've done to this point.
However, I can share some ideas either introduced or reinforced for me in the reading.
1. First and foremost, the forces that drove the Holocaust aren't so different from the forces that caused other atrocities throughout the world's history and the Germans aren't the only ones who have something to apologize for.
2. Hitler and his henchmen were likely a product of their environment. The Germans weren't alone in their anti-semantic policies and the Holocaust couldn't have taken place on the same scale without the complicity of other nations and tens of thousands of individuals who either cooperated with the lunacy (willingly or through coercion) or turned their heads the other way.
3. The idea of a superior race was not exclusive to the Germans. History is replete with examples of cultures who suffer from delusions of supremacy and seem to feel justified in efforts to segregate or "save" the world from the undesirables. I think it's also relevant that at that time in history the idea of eugenics had gained the interest and support of the scientific community.
4. The "Final Solution" evolved and had both ideological as well as practical implications.
5. None of us really knows that monster that lives within us. The "what ifs" are almost impossible to predict. The idea that only innately evil/bad people are capable of doing evil/bad things is naive and simplistic. Beliefs dictate our morality and thus draw the only lines in the sand that matter.
6. The collective is a powerful motivator as it influences belief and as such can exert a huge influence over the limits we set for ourselves.
7. Killing is easier to do from both a physical and psychological distance. Ideologically, killing is easier when you can convince yourself that the person you are killing is somehow less than human, unworthy of life...or less worthy of life, and/or an immediate threat to your well-being.
8. The human instinct for self-preservation can be more powerful than even our most deeply held convictions. When push comes to shove, the will to survive often trumps all else.
9. Revenge is a dish best not served. If a victim's only sense of justice comes from victimizing his perpetrator it only perpetuates the cycle. The Germans felt victimized by the Jews in World War I (whether justified or not). If in the process of killing the monster you have to become one, have your really won?
Some passages that stood out for me:
Complicity
The Monster Within
Toivi Blatt, a boy sent to Sobibor (a death camp) and spared so he could assist in the killing process by cutting hair, sorting clothes, taking baggage and cleaning camps.
One Man's Morality is Another Man's Madness
In reference to the vigilante style killings:
Maybe They Deserved It
I'm Bad But He's Really Bad
I'm not sure I can do a book like this justice in a review other than to say it was an excellent compliment to other readings I've done to this point.
However, I can share some ideas either introduced or reinforced for me in the reading.
1. First and foremost, the forces that drove the Holocaust aren't so different from the forces that caused other atrocities throughout the world's history and the Germans aren't the only ones who have something to apologize for.
2. Hitler and his henchmen were likely a product of their environment. The Germans weren't alone in their anti-semantic policies and the Holocaust couldn't have taken place on the same scale without the complicity of other nations and tens of thousands of individuals who either cooperated with the lunacy (willingly or through coercion) or turned their heads the other way.
3. The idea of a superior race was not exclusive to the Germans. History is replete with examples of cultures who suffer from delusions of supremacy and seem to feel justified in efforts to segregate or "save" the world from the undesirables. I think it's also relevant that at that time in history the idea of eugenics had gained the interest and support of the scientific community.
4. The "Final Solution" evolved and had both ideological as well as practical implications.
5. None of us really knows that monster that lives within us. The "what ifs" are almost impossible to predict. The idea that only innately evil/bad people are capable of doing evil/bad things is naive and simplistic. Beliefs dictate our morality and thus draw the only lines in the sand that matter.
6. The collective is a powerful motivator as it influences belief and as such can exert a huge influence over the limits we set for ourselves.
7. Killing is easier to do from both a physical and psychological distance. Ideologically, killing is easier when you can convince yourself that the person you are killing is somehow less than human, unworthy of life...or less worthy of life, and/or an immediate threat to your well-being.
8. The human instinct for self-preservation can be more powerful than even our most deeply held convictions. When push comes to shove, the will to survive often trumps all else.
9. Revenge is a dish best not served. If a victim's only sense of justice comes from victimizing his perpetrator it only perpetuates the cycle. The Germans felt victimized by the Jews in World War I (whether justified or not). If in the process of killing the monster you have to become one, have your really won?
Some passages that stood out for me:
Complicity
Auschwitz prisoners were even "sold" to the Bayer company, part of the I.G. Farben, as human guinea pigs for the testing of new drugs. One of the communications from Bayer to the Auschwitz authorities states that "The transport of 150 women arrived in good conditions. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price."
The Monster Within
Toivi Blatt, a boy sent to Sobibor (a death camp) and spared so he could assist in the killing process by cutting hair, sorting clothes, taking baggage and cleaning camps.
Yes, I thought about this. But nobody did anything. [I was]fifteen years old and had people with grown-up experience all around and nobody was doing anything. People change under some conditions. People asked me, "What did you learn?" and I think I'm only sure of one thing--nobody knows themselves. The nice person on the street, you ask him, "Where is North Street?" and he goes with you half a block and shows you, and is nice and kind. That same person in a different situation could be the worst sadist. Nobody knows themselves. All of us could be good people or bad people in these [different] situation. Sometimes, when somebody is really nice to me, I find myself thinking, "how will he be in Sobibor?"
It is as if, for people like Toivi Blatt, the realization came in the camps that human beings resemble elements that are changeable according to temperature. Just as water only exists as water in a certain temperature range and is steam or ice in others, so human beings can become different people according to extremes of circumstance.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this analysis is, in my experience, that it is one shared by many perpetrators. I remember one former dedicated member of the Nazi party saying to me in an exasperated manner, after I pressed him on why so many went along with the horrors of the regimes, "The trouble with the world today is that people who have never been tested go around making judgments about people who have."
One Man's Morality is Another Man's Madness
Even today Morris has "no problem" with having killed this German prisoner. It mattered not that the man he murdered had been a fellow inmate of Auschwitz. All that was important was the language he'd been speaking. "I was happy. They [the Germans] killed all my family, thirty or forty people, and I killed one German. Phuh! That was nothing. If I could kill a hundred of them I would be glad, because they destroyed us completely." No matter how he is questioned on the subject, Morris is unable to see any difference between the Germans who ran Auschwitz and the German prisoner he killed on the cattle car on that freezing winter night in Poland.
"We got angry," he [Moshe Tavor a member of the Jewish Brigade] says simply. "And many of us felt it wasn't enough that we participated in the war." So Moshe Tavor and his comrades discussed ways that they could take "revenge" on the Germans. Tavor says that they first used whatever contacts they had...Once all this preparation was complete, they would drive up to a house of the suspected perpetrator and take him away for an "interrogation."..."We would take this guy and he wouldn't resist. And from that moment on he no longer saw anything. He never saw his house again."
In reference to the vigilante style killings:
"Not that I was happy to do it--but I did it. I never had to drink before to make myself enthusiastic--I was always enthusiastic enough. I'm not saying that I was indifferent, but I was calm and quiet and I did my work. You can compare me perhaps even to the Germans themselves who did it, because they also did their work.
When I did it I felt very good. I mean not at the moment of the killing, but during that [overall] period of time. I can't say that I feel bad about it now. you can tell me I murdered people, but I know who I killed. So I'm not proud and I'm not guilty about it. I don't wake up at night with bad dreams or anything. I sleep well. I eat well. I live."
Maybe They Deserved It
"I couldn't understand how six or eight German soldiers could lead one hundred and fifty people into vehicles and take them away. I think I might have attacked one of those Germans and let them kill me and get it over with...I feel very connected to the people who fought here [in Israel] two thousand years ago and I was less attached to the Jew who went like sheep to the slaughter--this I couldn't understand."
I'm Bad But He's Really Bad
You still kill them but you kill them from a distance, and it doesn't have the demoralizing effect upon you that it did if I went up and stuck a bayonet in someone's stomach in the course of combat. It's just different. It's kind of like conducting war through a video game.
November 6, 2012
I've read countless books on the holocaust. I've taken classes on Genocide. The pages I've read and absorbed on hate, suffering and the amazing will to survive will never leave me. Books on Hitler. Nazis. Speer. Höss. Goebbels. Even Eva. Germany. France. Russia. Hungary. Poland. Ghettos. Stars. Treblinka. Sobibor. Ravensbruk. Dachau. And of course, Auschwitz. I've been there. I've made that climb to the Eagles Nest and viewed that panoramic sky. It's downright evil that such a place of beauty ever gave Adolf and those close to him even a momentary speck of solace.
Yet, as ever, there are still stories to be told. Things to be learned. Misinformation to be debunked and sorted out as new found information comes to light. The learning continuum relentlessly rolls on. Even regarding such a heavily reported subject as this.
The Washington Post has this to say about the British Award Winning author and filmmaker Laurence Rees on his book "Auschwitz:"
"[Rees]...does at the gut level what Hannah Arendt achieved forty years ago...forcing the reader to shift the Holocaust out of the realm of nightmare or Gothic horror and acknowledge it as something all to human."
Laurence Rees, with his insightful, probing book into Nazi Germany and the Concentration Camps, the Guards and SS Officers who ran them, particulary Auschwitz, won the History Book of the Year Award in Britian in 2006 as well as a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for writing, producing, and directing a series of his book. He Is the only person to of been awarded this dual distinction.
If you think you know all there is all to know about Auschwitz, think again. This book has a lot to offer.
If you know you don't know enough about the holocaust, read this book. Hey, pick any book. If you don't understand the insidious nature of Genocide: The Armenian genocide, Rawanda, Darfur, Bosnia; start educating yourself. Genocides abound. What they have in common is a slow eerily-quiet beginning, before ascending. It need never happen. It must never happen. Not again.
Yet, as ever, there are still stories to be told. Things to be learned. Misinformation to be debunked and sorted out as new found information comes to light. The learning continuum relentlessly rolls on. Even regarding such a heavily reported subject as this.
The Washington Post has this to say about the British Award Winning author and filmmaker Laurence Rees on his book "Auschwitz:"
"[Rees]...does at the gut level what Hannah Arendt achieved forty years ago...forcing the reader to shift the Holocaust out of the realm of nightmare or Gothic horror and acknowledge it as something all to human."
Laurence Rees, with his insightful, probing book into Nazi Germany and the Concentration Camps, the Guards and SS Officers who ran them, particulary Auschwitz, won the History Book of the Year Award in Britian in 2006 as well as a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for writing, producing, and directing a series of his book. He Is the only person to of been awarded this dual distinction.
If you think you know all there is all to know about Auschwitz, think again. This book has a lot to offer.
If you know you don't know enough about the holocaust, read this book. Hey, pick any book. If you don't understand the insidious nature of Genocide: The Armenian genocide, Rawanda, Darfur, Bosnia; start educating yourself. Genocides abound. What they have in common is a slow eerily-quiet beginning, before ascending. It need never happen. It must never happen. Not again.
December 23, 2022
Неймовірна книга. Дуже раджу, наполегливо рекомендую. Одна з найкращих цього року, у моєму житті.
July 11, 2009
This historical non-fiction is 300 pages but I spent only 3 working days (which means I read only at home - late evening and early morning) to finish it. I just could not put it down. It is well-reseached and contains interviews of the survivors not only the Jews from diffent countries (Poland, France, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, Belgium and Netherlands, etc) but also the other groups like gypsies, Jehova's Witness, etc.
Previously, my only knowledge about Holocaust was those from watching Schindler's List and The Pianist and reading Anne Frank and Victor Klemperer (read in April of this year). This book, however, Auschwitz: A New History, gives a more details on what happened not only in Auschwitz but also in the other lesser-known death camps like Birkenau, Sobibor, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, etc.
Anne Frank was in the hiding while Victor Klemperer was working outside the concentration camp during the Holocaust. This book tells us about the atrocities of the Germany as they implemented "The Final Solution".
I learned so many things but the ones that stucked me most are:
1) There were brothels with working prostitutes inside Auschwitz to motivate the Germans (Kapos and guards), their unwilling but had no choice cohorts (Sonderkommandos) and even the Jews. Unlike the comfort women in Korea, the Philippines, etc. the prostitutes here were not forced as they were paid for their services (and they "give what one wants").
2) "Canada" is that place where some chosen women work by sorting out the valuables of the Jews after they are gassed out. Working in "Canada" is a privilege as there are foods and roof above their heads but they are also tortured and raped by the Kapos.
3) The Kapos favored hiring Jehova's Witnesses as they are very honest and hardworking. These people believe that God was still with them inside the camp which was unlike the Jews that abandoned their faith. Most Jews who survived said that they just went through the motion and learned to be "numbed."
4) That the Germans killed so many people like 10,000 per day. This coined the term Death Factories. It is really barbaric and I could not put down the book and sleep at the height of anger. I ended up light headed in the office for a couple of days because of few hours of sleep.
There are other heartwarming small stories in the book, e.g., the Kapos falling in love with the lady Jew after hearing her sing, the 8 year old girl who saw a ghost across the river and survived the later part of the Holocaust, the two Sonderkommandos who were not used to seeing dead people but were asked to assist in gassing the victims and later get their gold teeth. Small stories were told in crisp, vivid way that will surely imprint the images in your mind for the rest of your life.
This is one hell of a book for one hell of the history of shame.
Previously, my only knowledge about Holocaust was those from watching Schindler's List and The Pianist and reading Anne Frank and Victor Klemperer (read in April of this year). This book, however, Auschwitz: A New History, gives a more details on what happened not only in Auschwitz but also in the other lesser-known death camps like Birkenau, Sobibor, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, etc.
Anne Frank was in the hiding while Victor Klemperer was working outside the concentration camp during the Holocaust. This book tells us about the atrocities of the Germany as they implemented "The Final Solution".
I learned so many things but the ones that stucked me most are:
1) There were brothels with working prostitutes inside Auschwitz to motivate the Germans (Kapos and guards), their unwilling but had no choice cohorts (Sonderkommandos) and even the Jews. Unlike the comfort women in Korea, the Philippines, etc. the prostitutes here were not forced as they were paid for their services (and they "give what one wants").
2) "Canada" is that place where some chosen women work by sorting out the valuables of the Jews after they are gassed out. Working in "Canada" is a privilege as there are foods and roof above their heads but they are also tortured and raped by the Kapos.
3) The Kapos favored hiring Jehova's Witnesses as they are very honest and hardworking. These people believe that God was still with them inside the camp which was unlike the Jews that abandoned their faith. Most Jews who survived said that they just went through the motion and learned to be "numbed."
4) That the Germans killed so many people like 10,000 per day. This coined the term Death Factories. It is really barbaric and I could not put down the book and sleep at the height of anger. I ended up light headed in the office for a couple of days because of few hours of sleep.
There are other heartwarming small stories in the book, e.g., the Kapos falling in love with the lady Jew after hearing her sing, the 8 year old girl who saw a ghost across the river and survived the later part of the Holocaust, the two Sonderkommandos who were not used to seeing dead people but were asked to assist in gassing the victims and later get their gold teeth. Small stories were told in crisp, vivid way that will surely imprint the images in your mind for the rest of your life.
This is one hell of a book for one hell of the history of shame.
December 16, 2021
I picked up this book from one of my most favourite places: The book farm. It really is heaven for a bibliophile, being surrounded in books, while the smell of freshly baked scones and coffee tickles your nostrils.
I need to return.
It's ironic that as I write this, my boy is watching "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" at school today, as part of their learning about the World War. It makes me sad that he is watching it, as despite being well made, the film is so utterly depressing, but on the other hand, I think he's at the age where he needs to know exactly what humans were capable of.
This book has a vast amount of information in it including, a history of all the camps, which was told in detail, which quite honestly, was disturbing, even for me. Rees includes stories of survivors, SS members and even Russians which were interesting, and I suppose makes this book different to others.
I think this book should be essential reading for all, especially if one is interested in learning more about The Holocaust.
I think what I found most difficult to stomach about this book was that the Nazi's, even years and years later didn't admit to how wrong and evil their actions were. Personally, that is enough to make me sick.
I need to return.
It's ironic that as I write this, my boy is watching "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" at school today, as part of their learning about the World War. It makes me sad that he is watching it, as despite being well made, the film is so utterly depressing, but on the other hand, I think he's at the age where he needs to know exactly what humans were capable of.
This book has a vast amount of information in it including, a history of all the camps, which was told in detail, which quite honestly, was disturbing, even for me. Rees includes stories of survivors, SS members and even Russians which were interesting, and I suppose makes this book different to others.
I think this book should be essential reading for all, especially if one is interested in learning more about The Holocaust.
I think what I found most difficult to stomach about this book was that the Nazi's, even years and years later didn't admit to how wrong and evil their actions were. Personally, that is enough to make me sick.
October 23, 2023
«В Аушвіці не було Бога. Там були такі жахливі умови, що Бог вирішив туди не зазирати. Ми не молились, бо знали, що не допоможе. Багато з тих хто вцілів у таборах, стали атеїстами. Вони просто більше не покладаються на Бога»
Автор зібрав свідчення понад сотні жертв табору, а також нацистів, котрі там працювали. Це найбільш повна історія, яка оповідає про час від моменту створення табору, до його знищення. За відчуттями це найкраща нон-фікшн книга, яку я читав, у мене аж закінчились стікери. Читати було дуже важко, але те що це не була суха історична справка, а історії з уст реальних людей роблять цю книгу сильною та цікавою.
Також було цікаво спостерігати за поведінкою політиків та жителів різних маленьких країн під німецькою окупацією. Ніколи не задумувався, про те, що відбувалося в Словаччині, Угорщині чи Данії.
Якщо ви цікавитись історією, то книжка вам точно сподобається, а якщо не цікавитись � то пора б уже в нас час і поцікавитись нею, бо як казав Довженко: «Народ, що не знає своєї історії, є народ сліпців»!
Автор зібрав свідчення понад сотні жертв табору, а також нацистів, котрі там працювали. Це найбільш повна історія, яка оповідає про час від моменту створення табору, до його знищення. За відчуттями це найкраща нон-фікшн книга, яку я читав, у мене аж закінчились стікери. Читати було дуже важко, але те що це не була суха історична справка, а історії з уст реальних людей роблять цю книгу сильною та цікавою.
Також було цікаво спостерігати за поведінкою політиків та жителів різних маленьких країн під німецькою окупацією. Ніколи не задумувався, про те, що відбувалося в Словаччині, Угорщині чи Данії.
Якщо ви цікавитись історією, то книжка вам точно сподобається, а якщо не цікавитись � то пора б уже в нас час і поцікавитись нею, бо як казав Довженко: «Народ, що не знає своєї історії, є народ сліпців»!
May 6, 2020
Μια από τις τραγικοτερες στιγμές της ανθρώπινης ύπαρξης περιγράφεται αναλυτικά μέσα σε 400 σελίδες. Ένα καλοδουλεμένο και συγκλονιστικό βιβλίο, μέσα στο οποίο αποτυπώνονται αμέτρητες φρικαλεότητες και απάνθρωπα εγκλήματα. Προσωπικά αυτό που μου έκανε περισσότερο εντύπωση, εκτός από το διεστραμμένο τρόπο σκέψης των Ες Ες και των υποστηρικτών τους, ήταν η στάση της Δανίας απέναντι στους Δανούς εβραίους, καθώς ηταν μια χωρα που εμεινε πιστη στις ηθικές της αξίες και δεν παραβλέψε ποτέ το κόστος μιας ανθρώπινης ζωής. Όπως επίσης και η στάση της "ηρωικής" Ρωσίας και του πολιτεύματός της...
December 9, 2010
The 5 stars I gave are not oh my gosh this was amazing 5 stars. It was I am completely speechless and cannot believe what I did not know 5 stars. I only write these reviews to print them out in my journal so 30 years from now I can laugh at how dumb I was. Or to see what I thought when I re read something. There were times in this book I went and hid in my room to cry so my wife couldn't see me. I have had countless sleepless nights. My kids have yelled out in their sleep and I have dashed into their room to realize it was nothing, then wander into the kitchen and sit at the table to try to get the thoughts out of my head, then blurry eyed wander back into their rooms to make sure they are still there. I will never forget what I have learned. My problems are so small. You have to read this book. Funny, I almost finished it on Pearl Harbor Day, the day Hitler fully committed to murder all of Europe's Jews-and then burn their remains. Children, women, men. All of them.
October 23, 2022
Такі книжки як ця допомагають зробити велику справу, а саме - вивчити один із уроків історії. Освічений - озброєний. Її великий плюс в тому, що тут ми чуємо історії конкретних людей - як жертв нацистів, так і есесівців. Глибока і вдумлива книжка.
February 18, 2008
Auschwitz: A New History was filled with new facts and numerous interviews with survivors and former SS. I liked the detailed interviews which spanned from Jewish people from numerous countries that turned them over to the Reich, gypsies, POWs, Jehovah's Witness, and other groups of people that in most books might have been passed over. It obviously gives more facts about the atrocities that occurred at Auschwitz then the other camps, but all the camps are brought up throughout the book. The information is, as in most Holocaust books, sad, shocking, and incredible.
October 19, 2019
I know a lot about WW2 history and the crimes that took place at Aushwitz however this book gave me a more detailed account of what went on there. The story’s are chilling and disturbing to know that human beings can do this to one another is horrifying. But at the same time some of the story’s of the inmates were full of courage and hope that one day this evil would end and it did!!!
I believe everyone should read this book and that we never forget the 1.1 million lives lost at Aushwitz 🌺
I believe everyone should read this book and that we never forget the 1.1 million lives lost at Aushwitz 🌺
March 1, 2012
I would like to preface this review by stating that I have read a great deal of Holocaust literature and each evokes in me a different emotional response, but never before has a text exposed me to both an analytical and equally sorrowful account of this dark period in history. Much like the point in time this work is based on, the subject matter is not for the faint of heart. The author does not skirt over any events that took place in Auschwitz including the part played by the Allies and the non-Jewish population of Europe in the continued enterprise of the camp. The author also introduces a few novel explanations surrounding the psyche of the SS guards as well as the prisoners who functioned as Kapos in the camp. I found the personal testimonies which were incorporated throughout the text to be particularly poignant in describing the daily dynamics of camp life. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest not only in Holocaust literature, but to anyone who has a desire to learn further about the hateful and cruel potential of man.
March 8, 2016
A coming soon review
July 26, 2020
My first exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust occurred in the early �60s. My sixth-grade teacher—a Holocaust survivor—told us stories about her confinement and even showed us her tattoo to support her story. Later, as a freshman in college, I had a professor of German language who had escaped from one of the Nazi concentration camps. She told us about her experience walking across the Alps to freedom. Since then, I have read a number of history books that have added to my mental picture of these camps, starting with Jean-François Steiner’s book Treblinka in the late �60s. Nevertheless, after reading Laurence Rees’s book Auschwitz: A New History, I discovered that there was still much I did not know about the horror of these extermination camps.
January 27, 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi concentration camp, by the Red Army. Laurence Rees, a British historian, documentary filmmaker, and creative director of history programs for the BBC, has written this book as a companion volume to a six-hour documentary series that was aired on PBS and the BBC in 2005. While the largest mass murder in human history took place at Auschwitz, its story has not been fully known. In this new history of the Nazis� most notorious death camp, Rees gives a complete history of the camp—how it was turned from a concentration camp into a death factory. But this is more than an anecdotal account of Nazi brutality; this groundbreaking work is based on impeccable scholarship and more than 100 original interviews with both survivors and Nazi perpetrators. Their testimonies provide a picture of the inner workings of the camp in unmatched detail. The inclusion of insights gathered from interviews with the Nazi officials and soldiers gives the reader an unprecedented glimpse into the mindset of these perpetrators. In addition, Rees mines a wealth of new information about Auschwitz that includes Himmler’s desk diary—discovered in Russia fifty years after they were thought to have been burned in an SS furnace. Through these new sources, this incredible narrative history of the most notorious concentration camp preserves the authentic voices of those who suffered and those who caused their suffering.
Rees gives a complete history of the camp—from its relatively benign origins as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners in 1940 to the strategic decisions that led Hitler and Himmler to turn Auschwitz into the primary site for the extermination of Europe's Jews in their "Final Solution." Rees provides a balanced history of the various groups that faced death in Auschwitz, including the Jews, Russian POWs, Gypsies, communists and homosexuals; however, the author concentrates primarily on the Jewish experience. Murdering Jews was not the original intention of the camp; it was not until 1942 that Auschwitz was turned into a death camp. As train loads of Jewish men, women and children arrived at the camp, they would be divided into two groups—those fit to work as slave laborers and those consigned to die immediately in the gas chambers. In his history, Rees corrects some of the commonly-held, but flawed, views on the mass killings of World War II. The "Final Solution" actually came about in an unplanned fashion, as Nazi officials struggled to find a way to implement their poisonous anti-Semitism. Jews were murdered as much to solve problems of living space and food in occupied Poland as to fulfil Hitler's anti-Semitism. The Nazis proceeded in a series of incremental steps until they eventually reached the industrial-scale slaughter carried out in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Many of these incremental changes came about because of an atrocious lack of planning by the Nazis. Their poorly laid plans often ran into trouble, which provoked even more extreme solutions to get out of the trouble. For example, the Nazi’s initial efforts at using gas chambers were greatly hindered by the challenges faced in disposing of the bodies. Ultimately the Nazis hit upon the use of an agent known as Zyklon-B, a cyanide-based pesticide, that allowed them to “gas� their victims to death with hydrogen cyanide. To accommodate this, they built huge gas chambers into which they could cram hundreds of victims at once. By the time that Auschwitz was liberated, more than 1.1 million people were slaughtered there, including more than 200,000 children, 90 per cent of them Jews. Along the way, Rees provides details about the day to day running of the camp, from the opening of the camp brothel to stories about individual acts of kindness and the Danish rescue of their Jewish community.
Written in a lively, narrative style that makes the text accessible for general readers, Rees has given us an authoritative work that provides a wealth of new information about Auschwitz. Significantly, he does not shy away from asking difficult questions. One of the hallmarks of his book is that Rees illustrates just how easy it is to look the other way while others commit atrocities—and just how easy it is for individuals to allow their prejudices to turn them into vicious murderers when given the opportunity.
January 27, 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi concentration camp, by the Red Army. Laurence Rees, a British historian, documentary filmmaker, and creative director of history programs for the BBC, has written this book as a companion volume to a six-hour documentary series that was aired on PBS and the BBC in 2005. While the largest mass murder in human history took place at Auschwitz, its story has not been fully known. In this new history of the Nazis� most notorious death camp, Rees gives a complete history of the camp—how it was turned from a concentration camp into a death factory. But this is more than an anecdotal account of Nazi brutality; this groundbreaking work is based on impeccable scholarship and more than 100 original interviews with both survivors and Nazi perpetrators. Their testimonies provide a picture of the inner workings of the camp in unmatched detail. The inclusion of insights gathered from interviews with the Nazi officials and soldiers gives the reader an unprecedented glimpse into the mindset of these perpetrators. In addition, Rees mines a wealth of new information about Auschwitz that includes Himmler’s desk diary—discovered in Russia fifty years after they were thought to have been burned in an SS furnace. Through these new sources, this incredible narrative history of the most notorious concentration camp preserves the authentic voices of those who suffered and those who caused their suffering.
Rees gives a complete history of the camp—from its relatively benign origins as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners in 1940 to the strategic decisions that led Hitler and Himmler to turn Auschwitz into the primary site for the extermination of Europe's Jews in their "Final Solution." Rees provides a balanced history of the various groups that faced death in Auschwitz, including the Jews, Russian POWs, Gypsies, communists and homosexuals; however, the author concentrates primarily on the Jewish experience. Murdering Jews was not the original intention of the camp; it was not until 1942 that Auschwitz was turned into a death camp. As train loads of Jewish men, women and children arrived at the camp, they would be divided into two groups—those fit to work as slave laborers and those consigned to die immediately in the gas chambers. In his history, Rees corrects some of the commonly-held, but flawed, views on the mass killings of World War II. The "Final Solution" actually came about in an unplanned fashion, as Nazi officials struggled to find a way to implement their poisonous anti-Semitism. Jews were murdered as much to solve problems of living space and food in occupied Poland as to fulfil Hitler's anti-Semitism. The Nazis proceeded in a series of incremental steps until they eventually reached the industrial-scale slaughter carried out in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Many of these incremental changes came about because of an atrocious lack of planning by the Nazis. Their poorly laid plans often ran into trouble, which provoked even more extreme solutions to get out of the trouble. For example, the Nazi’s initial efforts at using gas chambers were greatly hindered by the challenges faced in disposing of the bodies. Ultimately the Nazis hit upon the use of an agent known as Zyklon-B, a cyanide-based pesticide, that allowed them to “gas� their victims to death with hydrogen cyanide. To accommodate this, they built huge gas chambers into which they could cram hundreds of victims at once. By the time that Auschwitz was liberated, more than 1.1 million people were slaughtered there, including more than 200,000 children, 90 per cent of them Jews. Along the way, Rees provides details about the day to day running of the camp, from the opening of the camp brothel to stories about individual acts of kindness and the Danish rescue of their Jewish community.
Written in a lively, narrative style that makes the text accessible for general readers, Rees has given us an authoritative work that provides a wealth of new information about Auschwitz. Significantly, he does not shy away from asking difficult questions. One of the hallmarks of his book is that Rees illustrates just how easy it is to look the other way while others commit atrocities—and just how easy it is for individuals to allow their prejudices to turn them into vicious murderers when given the opportunity.
October 7, 2013
Others have complained about some aspects of this book - specifically, that much of it focuses on details which are not at first glance, directly related to Aushwitz, such as what happened to the Jewish people in Denmark, and details and accounts of the three death camps built in Poland, the names of which I, and I'm sure many others, had never heard before.
I wanted to say that all of these details and stories, from the revolt at Sobibor (one of the three death camps) led by Slovakian POWs, to the way Jews of Denmark were transported across a body of water in the dead of night to Sweden, and mostly escaped the horrors that met Jews in many other countries - are all larger contextual details and information that have relevance to this thorough and accessible account of Aushwitz.
The example of Denmark is such a stark contrast to the horrific crimes wrought upon the Jewish children in France, neglected and tortured after being snatched from their families, that both stories serve to illustrate how so many came to perish in the camps at Aushwitz. Without the cooperation of the French government, and of many others (including Guernsey and Jersey, two British islands), the mass deportation and subsequent murder of so many Jews from Hungary, Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Slovakia, would likely to have been much harder for the Nazis to achieve.
I just wanted to add that. It is important, I feel, to get a larger view of the factors and decisions that resulted in so many people to be removed from their homes, their countries, and their families, leading them to Aushwitz, Sorbibo, Treblinka and Belzec, and these facts should not be forgotten from history, or disregarded as unimportant.
This book does an excellent job of that. It was difficult to read, but only from an emotional perspective. I learned many things, and would recommend this to anybody interested in learning how several social, political, economic and cultural attitudes, institutions, individuals and historical events affected the shape Aushwitz would take as the most horrific site of mass-murder in history.
Especially moving are the stories from survivors of the Holocaust.
I wanted to say that all of these details and stories, from the revolt at Sobibor (one of the three death camps) led by Slovakian POWs, to the way Jews of Denmark were transported across a body of water in the dead of night to Sweden, and mostly escaped the horrors that met Jews in many other countries - are all larger contextual details and information that have relevance to this thorough and accessible account of Aushwitz.
The example of Denmark is such a stark contrast to the horrific crimes wrought upon the Jewish children in France, neglected and tortured after being snatched from their families, that both stories serve to illustrate how so many came to perish in the camps at Aushwitz. Without the cooperation of the French government, and of many others (including Guernsey and Jersey, two British islands), the mass deportation and subsequent murder of so many Jews from Hungary, Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Slovakia, would likely to have been much harder for the Nazis to achieve.
I just wanted to add that. It is important, I feel, to get a larger view of the factors and decisions that resulted in so many people to be removed from their homes, their countries, and their families, leading them to Aushwitz, Sorbibo, Treblinka and Belzec, and these facts should not be forgotten from history, or disregarded as unimportant.
This book does an excellent job of that. It was difficult to read, but only from an emotional perspective. I learned many things, and would recommend this to anybody interested in learning how several social, political, economic and cultural attitudes, institutions, individuals and historical events affected the shape Aushwitz would take as the most horrific site of mass-murder in history.
Especially moving are the stories from survivors of the Holocaust.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 5, 2017
The premise of the book is that Nazis at all levels, from the soldier to the leaders, years later that they saw nothing wrong with the way they acted at the time and for many even many years later. The book is more than just a history of Auschwitz, arguably the most infamous of all Nazi concentration camps. It sets Auschwitz in the mist of the Nazis attempt to exterminate the Jews. According to the book Auschwitz was not just an extermination camp. Matter of fact this was not its main purpose from the start. It started out as a camp to hold Polish prisoners, but quickly took on Polish Jews as well. At one point it was also used to work Russian prisoners of war to death. It certainly was used to exterminate over a million Jews, most of them from other countries besides Poland. Most Polish Jews were put to death at camps like Sobibor and Treblinka. So Auschwitz is portray as a mix used camp, serving many purposes throughout its life time.
The book was written by the producer of many BBC documentaries, interviewing many many individuals some of which were written about in the book.
I found the book to have presented a good picture of Auschwitz. I thought the author made a good case towards his major premise. I also manage to learn some new things about the Nazis� “Final Solution� and the involvement of Auschwitz in it.
This would be a good book for someone interested in the killing of “six million� Jews during World War II. I might not suggest it as an introductory text on the Holocaust, but as an adjunct it would be very good.
The book was written by the producer of many BBC documentaries, interviewing many many individuals some of which were written about in the book.
I found the book to have presented a good picture of Auschwitz. I thought the author made a good case towards his major premise. I also manage to learn some new things about the Nazis� “Final Solution� and the involvement of Auschwitz in it.
This would be a good book for someone interested in the killing of “six million� Jews during World War II. I might not suggest it as an introductory text on the Holocaust, but as an adjunct it would be very good.
June 13, 2014
Descriptive, informative and painful all at once. Having studied the Holocaust for the past 16 years, this book provides new and interesting information. The information is astounding. It was fascinating to read from many different perspectives of all those who were involved; victims, perpetrators, and outsiders.
One of the survivors said that Nobody knows themselves. Upon meeting someone who is kind, he wonders how kind they would be in camp. Survival is one hell of a form of betrayal. Unfortunately, this still subsides today with most. It's a lot easier to go with the flow than to fight for what's right. Which is why I have discovered such a new perspective on these countries who betrayed their citizens, and a newfound respect to those who protected them, which was scarce.
An appalling moment in history that one should never cease to forget. Rest in peace to the victims of the Holocaust.
One of the survivors said that Nobody knows themselves. Upon meeting someone who is kind, he wonders how kind they would be in camp. Survival is one hell of a form of betrayal. Unfortunately, this still subsides today with most. It's a lot easier to go with the flow than to fight for what's right. Which is why I have discovered such a new perspective on these countries who betrayed their citizens, and a newfound respect to those who protected them, which was scarce.
An appalling moment in history that one should never cease to forget. Rest in peace to the victims of the Holocaust.
August 9, 2019
Un recorrido muy exhaustivo sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial y porque Auschwitz es el campo de concentración y exterminio más “famoso� pero no en el que se cometieron más crímenes ni el primero de los que existieron. Con voces que testifican lo acontecido tanto del lado de los judíos, gitanos, prisioneros de guerra...que sobrevivieron a alguno de estos campos de concentración y también, voces por la parte de los alemanes, los guardias o comandantes del tercer Reich.
A su vez nos habla del final de la guerra y de lo que se padeció, pues no fue ninguna liberación mágica y maravillosa más bien todo lo contrario; perpetrados los crímenes en su mayoría por el Ejército Rojo, a las órdenes de Stalin, un loco asesino a la par que Hitler.
Muy recomendable para saber más, profundizar en un pasado que no debemos olvidar.
A su vez nos habla del final de la guerra y de lo que se padeció, pues no fue ninguna liberación mágica y maravillosa más bien todo lo contrario; perpetrados los crímenes en su mayoría por el Ejército Rojo, a las órdenes de Stalin, un loco asesino a la par que Hitler.
Muy recomendable para saber más, profundizar en un pasado que no debemos olvidar.
December 30, 2023
Buvo labai įdomu skaityti. Autorius pateikia daug informacijos apie koncentracijos stovyklas, tą laikmetį, politinius sprendimus, kertines asmenybes ir mėgina paaiškinti, kodėl vyko tai, kad vyko. Kodėl Aušvicas augo ir kito. Taip pat pateikta daug žmonių pasakojimų, tiek interviu su buvusius esesininku, tiek žmonių, kurie buvo išvežti į koncentracijos stovyklą. Skaitydamas vieno žmogaus patyrimus, tiek apie gyvenimą Aušvice ir apskritai, apie dalykus, kurie tuo laikmečiu dėjosi, nesuprasi. Manau, žminėms, kuriems įdomi ši tema, čia yra privalomas skaitinys.
January 28, 2008
I've been interested in the history of the Holocaust ever since I first studied it in eighth grade. This book is a well-researched, extremely thorough account of what happened at Auschwitz, with many personal details from the people who were there.
March 31, 2015
This is probably one of the best books concerning the Holocaust that that I have ever read. Not because it is abound with new information, just the opposite in fact, much of the facts discussed are ones that I have heard before. What truly makes this book remarkable is the overwhelming amount of research that went into it, specifically the gathering of first hand accounts from Nazis and survivors alike. These accounts lend an unmistakable realism to the discussion. The reader is not able to disassociate themselves from the material, but are instead drawn into the experience and forced to gain an understanding of what happened during one of the darkest times in human history.
Rees does not shy away from placing the blame for the atrocities of Auschwitz and the other camps at the feet of the Nazi puppeteers such as Hitler, Himmler, and Hoss. But he also turns the finger of judgement towards the allies and the Nazis collaborators. While he acknowledges that Allied bombing of Auschwitz in 1944 would have done little to prevent the killing of Jews, he attacks the Allied leaders for their reasoning behind their failure to act. He shows that the allied leaders were fully aware of what was occurring in the German sphere of influence and that genocide was being committed against the Jews of Europe, but rather than intervene the allies turned a blind eye to it, preferring to go the route of saving them by "winning the war". Therefore they ignored the please of several influential groups, using excuses such as being unable to reach the camp for a night raid, or being unable to deal with a flood of refugees that liberation would cause. These excuses, given by both the governments of the US and Britain, coupled with Stalin's own anti-Semitic policies (before, after, and during the war) showed the extents to which the world was willing to go to avoid dealing with the sickening truth of what was happening.
Rees is equally critical of the nations that the German's occupied during the war such as Poland, Slovakia, France, and Hungary, none of which made any concerted effort to prevent the Germans from removing the Jews, even if like Hungary and Vichy France, they had definite government control. The only country that Rees applauds is Denmark, where a concerted effort by government, police, and citizens allowed the death toll for Denmark's Jews to be under 100 out of an estimated 8000 living in the country at the start of the occupation.
The book is a clear indication that we can never be done with the Holocaust, it is something that must never be forgotten, not only for its terrible human cost, but for its ideological causes. We as humans can never again allow ourselves to undergo a social transformation in which the shunning and persecution of and entire segment of society is acceptable. We should look at the events that occurred during these dark times, and take steps to ensure that they never repeat themselves.
Rees does not shy away from placing the blame for the atrocities of Auschwitz and the other camps at the feet of the Nazi puppeteers such as Hitler, Himmler, and Hoss. But he also turns the finger of judgement towards the allies and the Nazis collaborators. While he acknowledges that Allied bombing of Auschwitz in 1944 would have done little to prevent the killing of Jews, he attacks the Allied leaders for their reasoning behind their failure to act. He shows that the allied leaders were fully aware of what was occurring in the German sphere of influence and that genocide was being committed against the Jews of Europe, but rather than intervene the allies turned a blind eye to it, preferring to go the route of saving them by "winning the war". Therefore they ignored the please of several influential groups, using excuses such as being unable to reach the camp for a night raid, or being unable to deal with a flood of refugees that liberation would cause. These excuses, given by both the governments of the US and Britain, coupled with Stalin's own anti-Semitic policies (before, after, and during the war) showed the extents to which the world was willing to go to avoid dealing with the sickening truth of what was happening.
Rees is equally critical of the nations that the German's occupied during the war such as Poland, Slovakia, France, and Hungary, none of which made any concerted effort to prevent the Germans from removing the Jews, even if like Hungary and Vichy France, they had definite government control. The only country that Rees applauds is Denmark, where a concerted effort by government, police, and citizens allowed the death toll for Denmark's Jews to be under 100 out of an estimated 8000 living in the country at the start of the occupation.
The book is a clear indication that we can never be done with the Holocaust, it is something that must never be forgotten, not only for its terrible human cost, but for its ideological causes. We as humans can never again allow ourselves to undergo a social transformation in which the shunning and persecution of and entire segment of society is acceptable. We should look at the events that occurred during these dark times, and take steps to ensure that they never repeat themselves.
April 3, 2016
Oh, man. Everyone needs to read this book.
I learned many things about Auschwitz I didn't know before. Well written, intensely researched, intricately detailed, I learned about concentration camps, work camps, and death camps. I saw how European countries were culpable in the detention and transport of Jews to Auschwitz, and how many (not all) looked on as their neighbors were taken away. I thought perhaps Germans, Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, French, etc., really weren't aware of the mass extermination of human beings, and I found out that I was wrong. Everyone knew. I see now how it happened, and given the political climate in the U.S., I can see it happening again.
A question that had always bothered me was answered: Why didn't the Allies bomb the camp, or the railway lines? From pps. 244-245:
"Requests to bomb Auschwitz were also reaching London. When Churchill heard about them on July 7, he wrote to his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, saying - now famously- 'Get anything out of the Air Force you can and invoke me if necessary.' The Air Ministry examined the various possibilities and Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Secretary of State for Air, replied on July 15 in a broadly negative manner...he pointed out that it was impossible for British Bomber Command to cover such a great distance in one night - and the British specialized in night-time bombing. Only Americans bombed by day...he proposed laying the matter before them...
In any event...he was passing responsibility for the whole business over to the US Air Force. John McCloy in the US War Dept. in August dismissed further pleas for action from the World Jewish Congress. In Britain, a Foreign Office official suggested that regardless of any practical difficulties, there were also 'political' reasons not to pursue the bombing- almost certainly the 'flood' of displaced Jews that would seek sanctuary in Palestine, a territory currently governed by the British.
So on both sides of the Atlantic, the decision was made not to bomb Auschwitz. But crucially, the decision was also made not even to consider the bombing of Auschwitz. No proper aerial reconnaissance of the camp was undertaken, no feasibility study drawn up, no detailed attempt of any sort made to evaluate the various options....The lack of proper consideration and the dismissive tone in some of the documents all give off the lingering sense that no one was bothered enough to make bombing Auschwitz a priority."
Everyone needs to read this book. EVERYONE.
I learned many things about Auschwitz I didn't know before. Well written, intensely researched, intricately detailed, I learned about concentration camps, work camps, and death camps. I saw how European countries were culpable in the detention and transport of Jews to Auschwitz, and how many (not all) looked on as their neighbors were taken away. I thought perhaps Germans, Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, French, etc., really weren't aware of the mass extermination of human beings, and I found out that I was wrong. Everyone knew. I see now how it happened, and given the political climate in the U.S., I can see it happening again.
A question that had always bothered me was answered: Why didn't the Allies bomb the camp, or the railway lines? From pps. 244-245:
"Requests to bomb Auschwitz were also reaching London. When Churchill heard about them on July 7, he wrote to his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, saying - now famously- 'Get anything out of the Air Force you can and invoke me if necessary.' The Air Ministry examined the various possibilities and Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Secretary of State for Air, replied on July 15 in a broadly negative manner...he pointed out that it was impossible for British Bomber Command to cover such a great distance in one night - and the British specialized in night-time bombing. Only Americans bombed by day...he proposed laying the matter before them...
In any event...he was passing responsibility for the whole business over to the US Air Force. John McCloy in the US War Dept. in August dismissed further pleas for action from the World Jewish Congress. In Britain, a Foreign Office official suggested that regardless of any practical difficulties, there were also 'political' reasons not to pursue the bombing- almost certainly the 'flood' of displaced Jews that would seek sanctuary in Palestine, a territory currently governed by the British.
So on both sides of the Atlantic, the decision was made not to bomb Auschwitz. But crucially, the decision was also made not even to consider the bombing of Auschwitz. No proper aerial reconnaissance of the camp was undertaken, no feasibility study drawn up, no detailed attempt of any sort made to evaluate the various options....The lack of proper consideration and the dismissive tone in some of the documents all give off the lingering sense that no one was bothered enough to make bombing Auschwitz a priority."
Everyone needs to read this book. EVERYONE.
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