Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp
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Book Summary Information
Editor: Franciszek PiperEditor: Teresa Swiebocka
Translator: Douglas Selvage
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 1996
ISBN: 8385047743
Number of pages: 347
Publisher: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Book Reviews of Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp
Book Review: The Essential Auschwitz: a Mini-Encyclopedia
Summary: 5 Stars
This one volume packs a great deal of information. This review is based on the 3rd (2004) edition. Details are given on the camp's construction, modus operandi, inmate "life" and forced labor, the gruesome experiments on humans (with emphasis on the development of mass sterilization methods for future genocidal projects: pp. 89-94), the tortures and murders, inmate resistance and revolts, Polish Underground's informing the world, evacuation of the camp, and punishment of some of the war criminals. Numerous photographs, diagrams, and documents are included.
The Auschwitz area had been directly incorporated into the Reich, and was not part of German-occupied Poland (p. 220). The camp was originally built for Poles, not Jews (p. 68). In fact, until well into the war (mid-1942), more Poles than Jews were being murdered at Auschwitz (p. 14).
Certain commentators, especially at the height of the Auschwitz Carmelite Convent controversy, had tried to make something of the fact that, unlike most Jews, most Poles sent to Auschwitz weren't gassed. This is clearly sophistry. Of the Polish inmates not murdered upon arrival, some 80% died from the conditions within two months. (p. 68)
Some accounts have survived of the Jews telling off their murderers before being gassed. They warned that the Germans would one day have to pay dearly for their acts (pp. 203-204). The modern practices of dichotomizing Nazis and Germans, and of blaming Christianity for the Holocaust, were clearly foreign to their thinking!
Polish assistance to Jews occurred even in Auschwitz. For instance, Polish inmates hid Jewish children among the Polish children (p. 138), warned Jews of impending danger, and shared their meager rations with Jewish inmates (p. 206). During the evacuation of Auschwitz on the heels of the advancing Red Army, local Poles helped feed and hide escaping Jewish evacuees. (pp. 277-278)
For the first decades after the war, the Polish Government had supported a figure of 4 million victims at Auschwitz. When the toll was subsequently lowered to around 1.5 million, accusations were made that the higher figure had been invented in order to hide the Jewishness of most of the victims (by "padding" the total with millions of nonexistent Polish gentile deaths). The absurdity of that Polonophobic charge is evident by examining how the original inflated death toll came about. It turns out that there were many highly inflated postwar estimates in circulation, including ones made by the Jews themselves. For instance, former Sonderkommandos Szlama Dragon and Henryk Tauber each had suggested four million gassed and cremated victims. (p. 184)
Current estimates are that the Jewish death toll at Auschwitz-Birkenau (combining registered and unregistered arrivals) may be as low as 960,000 (p. 195), with the Polish one at 75,000. The latter conservatively assumes 10,000 covert Polish deaths. However, a Polish Underground document which indicates that at least 50,000 gentile Poles were gassed at the camp (p. 193) would raise the Polish total to at least 115,000 deaths.
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