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BOOK REVIEW: ŒAuschwitz¹ Personalizes Horror That Should Never Be Forgotten
View Full Size ImageReviewed by David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Hinton (HNN) ‹ The level of human depravity is unfathomableŠand it will
always be like that. It¹s a very cynical view that has been formed in my
mind out of my experiences, I¹m sorry to say.‹Else Baker, imprisoned as an
eight-year-old child in Auschwitz in 1944Šbecause she was part gypsy.
Interviewed 60 years after she was miraculously released from the infamous
death factory, Else Baker¹s story is one of more than 100 woven into the
narrative of ³Auschwitz: A New History² by Laurence Rees (PublicAffairs, 384
pages, 16 pages of illustrations, $30.00) published to coincide with the
60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on Jan. 27,
1945. The book¹s publication also coincides with a resolution introduced by
Israel and endorsed by more than 150 members of the United Nations General
Assembly marking the event. Yes, that¹s the same UN General Assembly that
voted in 1975 to call Zionism racism, an infamous declaration that wasn¹t
repealed until 1991.
Rees is creative director of History Programs for the British Broadcasting
Corporation, which has just released a documentary on Auschwitz, co-produced
with KCET, Los Angeles, and broadcast on PBS. His remarkable book combines
interviews with survivors of the death factory in what is now Poland, along
with interviews of Germans and their henchmen who murdered an estimated 1.2
million people, 1 million of whom were Jews of various nationalities, from
the founding of the camp in 1940 to the day before it was liberated in
January 1945.
Baker, who was freed after her adoptive parents begged for her release, puts
words to my views about the qualities of the human species that allows
individuals to commit such atrocities. Her survival was due in large part to
succor provided by a kind-hearted woman guard. Don¹t call the perpetrators
of the Holocaust animals, I say, because animals don¹t act like this! Many
of the survivors wondered aloud how a supposedly civilized nation like
Germany could end up murdering an estimated 11 million civilians, including
6 million Jews. In addition to those killed in the camps, tens of millions
of people on all sides‹including millions of so-called ³Aryan² Germans
died as a direct result of German aggression.
Even when the Germans must have realized the futility of their aggression,
in 1944, they kept Auschwitz and other death camps like Sobibor, Treblinka
and Belsec busy with mass murder on a scale hitherto unknown, Rees devotes
most of the book to Auschwitz, but he also discusses the origins of the
³Final Solution² and the collaboration or lack of it in countries as varied
as Denmark, the Channel Islands, Slovakia, France and Hungary.
Only the Danes emerge with honor, thanks to their successful efforts to
evacuate most of the occupied nation¹s 8,000 Jews to neutral Sweden in
September and October 1943. Some 95 percent of Denmark¹s Jews survived. The
French officials of the puppet Vichy regime were a far different breed of
people, voluntarily turning over to the Germans at first thousands of
refugee Jews who had fled to France and finally a large portion of their own
citizens who were Jews by religion. Many French Jews survived, including
many children who were hidden by French gentiles.
Hungary, a Nazi ally since 1940, had played a crafty game with the Germans,
protecting Hungarian Jews who numbered 750,000, a full 5 percent of the
nation¹s population. Adolf Eichman, whose machinations are described in
detail by Rees, managed to get a large number of Hungarian Jews to the gas
chambers of Auschwitz in 1944, while a competing Nazi in Budapest arranged
to have about 1,600 Hungarian Jews freed and sent to Austria and then to
Switzerland for a price, of course.
Much of the book necessarily centers on SS Col. Rudolf Hoess, commandant of
Auschwitz from its inception until late 1943. Rees draws on material
obtained from Hoess after he was captured by the British and before he was
turned over to the Poles (he was hanged by the Poles, appropriately enough
at Auschwitz, on April 7, 1947). Last year I reviewed a book from Knopf
entitled ³The Nuremberg Interviews², edited by Robert Gellately and based on
the interviews by U.S. Army psychiatrist Dr. Leon Goldensohn. One of the
people Goldensohn interviewed at length was Hoess and his interview provides
useful information to supplement the Rees book ‹ as does the entire volume.
I recommend ³The Nuremberg Interviews² for those interested in furthering
their knowledge of Axis war crimes.
³Auschwitz² is a difficult book to read by anyone raised with ideas of
morality. The record of most countries with a majority Roman Catholic
population is especially shameful, with Catholic countries like Lithuania
and Slovakia committing atrocities that left even the Germans appalled. On
the other hand, Catholic Italy under Mussolini managed to save most of its
Jews. And Bulgaria, despite its record of anti-Semitism, quite successfully
resisted the German efforts to deport its Jewish citizens. Rees notes that
many of these efforts to save Jews were cynical ploys, coming only when the
erstwhile allies and collaborators of the Nazis realized the game was up.
Rees covers the inmate revolts at Sobibor and Auschwitz, including the Oct.
7, 1944 revolt of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando in Crematoria 4 inmates who
were forced to help with the disposal of the victims. This event saved the
life of 15-year-old Alice Lok Cahana, a Slovakian Jew who strived against
all odds to save the life of her sister Edith. This account of Alice and
Edith was among the most poignant of many similar ones in the book, in my
opinion, showing the highest qualities of humanity amidst the horror of
Auschwitz. Rees notes that Alice and Edith were imprisoned about the same
time as Else Baker. The beautifully written stories of these girls are in
Chapter 5: ³Frenzied Killing.² To find the fate of Alice and Edith, you¹ll
have to read the final chapter, ³Liberation and Retribution.²
Laurence Rees is to be commended for this important book and PublicAffairs
scores another triumph by publishing it.
Related:
www.publicaffairsbooks.com
Purchase: Auschwitz: A New History, by Laurence Rees
David M. Kinchen is the Editor of HuntingtonNews.Net, repsponses and article
submissions can be made to stories@huntingtonnews.net.
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