Auschwitz : true tales from a grotesque land
Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, Roslyn Hirsch (Translator), Eli Pfefferkorn (Editor), David H. Hirsch (Editor), Mazal Holocaust Collection
"From the moment I got to Auschwitz I was completely detached. I disconnected my heart and intellect in an act of self-defense, despair, and hopelessness." With these words Sara Nomberg-Przytyk begins this painful and compelling account of her experiences while imprisoned for two years in the infamous death camp. Writing twenty years after her liberation, she recreates the events of a dark past which, in her own words, would have driven her mad had she tried to relive it sooner. But while she records unimaginable atrocities, she also richly describes the human compassion that stubbornly survived despite the backdrop of camp depersonalization and imminent extermination. Commemorative in spirit and artistic in form, Auschwitz convincingly portrays the paradoxes of human nature in extreme circumstances. With consummate understatement Nomberg-Przytyk describes the behavior of concentration camp inmates as she relentlessly and pitilessly examines her own motives and feelings. In this world unmitigated cruelty coexisted with nobility, rapacity with self-sacrifice, indifference with selfless compassion. This book offers a chilling view of the human drama that existed in Auschwitz. From her portraits of camp personalities, an extraordinary and horrifying profile emerges of Dr. Josef Mengele, whose medical experiments resulted in the slaughter of nearly half a million Jews. Nomberg-Przytyk's job as an attendant in Mengle's hospital allowed her to observe this Angel of Death firsthand and to provide us with the most complete description to date of his monstrous activities. The original Polish manuscript was discovered by Eli Pfefferkorn in 1980 in the Yad Vashem Archive in Jerusalem. Not knowing the fate of the journal's author, Pfefferkorn spent two years searching and finally located Nomberg-Przytyk in Canada. Subsequent interviews revealed the history of the manuscript, the author's background, and brought the journal into perspective
Print Book, English, ©1985
University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, ©1985
Personal Narrative
xii, 185 pages ; 22 cm
9780807816295, 9780807841600, 0807816299, 0807841609
11091450
Alienation
Exchange
New arrivals
Without pity
Death of the Zugang
Salvation
The roar of the beast
The infirmary
What kind of a person was Orli Reichert?
The fight for Masha's life
A plate of soup
Erika's red triangle
A peculiar roll call
The block of death
Morituri te salutant
Marie and Odette
Esther's first born
Old words- new meanings
Children
A living torch
The little gypsy
Taut as a string
The extermination of the midgets
Natasha's triumph
The price of life
The lovers of Auschwitz
The dance of the rabbis
Revenge of a dancer
The verdict
Friendly meetings
Old women
Ilya Ehrenburg addresses us
The new year's celebration
The bewitched sleigh
The camp blanket
In pursuit of life
The plagues of Egypt
Without the escorts
The first days of freedom
The road back
Translated from Polish