It is hard to believe that this book is only now available in English. Consisting entirely of eye-witness accounts of life in German concentration camps, the work served as an important source of evidence during the Nazi trials. The accounts, however, are compiled so that they form a narrative that is roughly chronological, beginning with the experience of deportation and ending with the grim business of counting bodies. In between lies the whole experience of the prisoner: the forced and brutalizing work, the whimsical or studied methods of torture, the grisly medical experiments, the routine executions, the gasing of ever larger groups, the ovens that burned night and day, and constantly, throughout the story, the capricious beating, kicking and whipping. Primo Levi, who wrote so eloquently about the danger of forgetting, would have appreciated this book.
And Thomas Whissen, the translator, has performed an admirable and selfless job. He has rendered this story in a language that is so clear, so transparent, that one forgets that one is reading words on a page. The book leaves one feeling bruised and battered, and not quite willing to go back into a world of comforts. It leaves one deeply suspicious of humanity. And this perhaps is a good thing.
Incidentally, it is difficult to imagine a book better suited for university courses on the holocaust.
Carmine Di Biase, Ph.D. (cdibiase@jsucc.jsu.edu)