Before we get into detail discussing your book choices, I think it might be helpful to understand exactly what Auschwitz was. It wasn’t just one camp, but a group of camps—is that right? Leslie Epstein’s greatest novel, this 1979 book gives a fictional account of Chaim Rumkowski, the Polish Jew appointed by the Nazis as the head of the Council of Elders (known as the Judenrat) in the Łódź Ghetto during the occupation of Poland. Rumkowski was seen as a villain, famous for his role in delivering children to the Nazis for extermination. Ponary Diary, 1941-1943 by Kazimierz Sakowicz Only in West Germany did they refuse to adopt Nuremburg principles. In East Germany, they adopted a much broader definition which had to do with the fact that somebody was dead at the end of a process. In East Germany, former Nazis were six or seven times more likely to be prosecuted and convicted as in West Germany. Top image is of the entrance to Auschwitz, 1945, courtesy of Bundesarchiv B 285 Bild-04413, KZ Auschwitz, Einfahrt.

Holocaust Auschwitz Books - Goodreads

In the early years, people were actually not that interested in what survivors had experienced; they were only of interest as witnesses to the crimes of others, not as testimonies to what the past had done to them” First in your selection of books on Auschwitz, we have Charlotte Delbo. Tell me a bit about her story and why you chose her trilogy, Auschwitz and After. Out of more than 140,000 people investigated, fewer than 6,660 were actually found guilty—and of these, nearly 5,000 received lenient sentences of less than two years. Only 164 were found guilty of the crime of murder”

People in Auschwitz

Yes, there’s another book that I could have put in, Rebecca Wittmann’s book on the Auschwitz trial, Beyond Justice. Both, in different ways, point up that the West German choice to use the ordinary criminal law definition of murder was totally inappropriate for trying people who had been involved in a genocide. Collective violence is different from individual violence. Jarmila wrote: "Hi,can anyone recommend me the books that are dealing with the problem of post traumatic stress of holocaust survivor? tx" We need to understand the machinery of mass extermination that allowed a camp like Auschwitz to be constructed and to function and have all the sub-camps and to have all the involvement of industrialists and employers in slave labour—but we also need to explore why it was that, under some conditions, people who were simply bystanders were actually able to turn into rescuers—and why others chose to remain passive, or were instead complicit, betraying those who tried to hide and those who tried to help. And there were variations in the character of surrounding societies across Europe that affected the capacity of the persecuted to survive in different areas. How much does the politics that still bedevils this whole area of historical enquiry interfere with your work? Does it constrain you in any way? Is it something that you’re constantly dealing with, or is it an inevitable part of the work and something that you’re happy to embrace?

The best books on Auschwitz - Five Books

It’s a highly contentious account because he is held to have been somewhat complicit. To what extent is not at all clear, but he certainly made compromises and survived through both his medical expertise and the privileged positions that he was able to hold. What’s interesting about his account, which I found absolutely fascinating, is the way he explores the importance of meaning in life as the key to survival. Consequently, it has become commonplace to construe “Auschwitz” as signifying a decisive rupture in the history of humanity. A vast and impressive literature exploring this caesura poses fundamental questions about whole areas of human endeavor “after Auschwitz”—art, architecture, law, education, theology, ethics, and more. In other words, Auschwitz-Birkenau has been utilized by many intellectuals as a symbol or metaphor for the entire Holocaust.

Smoke Over Birkenau

The other thing to add about Bauer is that he was the guy who gave Mossad, the Israeli secret service, the tip-off on the whereabouts of Adolf Eichmann so that they could kidnap him and bring him to Jerusalem for trial. Fritz Bauer didn’t trust the West German government to give Eichmann a decent trial and an appropriate sentence, so Bauer tipped off Mossad to ensure that Eichmann was put on trial in Jerusalem and not in West Germany. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount. I want to begin to confront these questions, in light of constant concern about how little Americans understand of the Nazi genocide, by offering a list of books, 9 of them, written by survivors—Jews and non-Jews, men and women—about their hellish time in the Auschwitz complex. Exemplifying the imperative to witness, these works are much less familiar to audiences in the United States and may contribute to a more substantive historical knowledge of the Third Reich’s crimes. In East Germany, former Nazis were six or seven times more likely to be prosecuted and convicted as in West Germany” At the same time, the political parties in Austria were concerned to rehabilitate and integrate former Nazis. A lot of political pressure was put on judges, prosecutors and defence attorneys to ensure acquittals. From 1955 onwards, there were very few cases indeed in Austria. Those that were brought tended to end in acquittals; then from the mid-1970s the trials simply dried up entirely.