Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps

About the Book

This book is a translation of an oral history of the concentration camp experience recorded immediately after World War II as told by men and women who endured it and lived to tell about it. Their vivid, firsthand accounts heighten the reality of this experience in ways no third-person narrative can capture. Even when they are at a loss for words, their struggle to find language to express the unspeakable is, in itself, mute testimony to the ordeal etched forever on their memories. The testimonies are arranged to reflect the chronology of camp experience (from deportation to liberation), the living conditions of camp life (from malnutrition to forced labor), and the various methods of abuse and extermination (from castration to gassing and cremation). The chronology gives the accounts a narrative flow and even creates a certain suspense, especially as liberation nears and hopes rise.

Table of Contents:

Preface
Introduction
A Note About Eugène Aroneanu
List of Witnesses, Reports, and Documents
The Nazi's 4 Main Reasons for Internment
Deportation
Internment
Administration and Camp Regulations
Life in the Camps
Labor
Sanitary Conditions
Medical Experiments and Vivisection
Various Methods of Execution
Impact on the Prisoners
Extermination
Liberation
Number of Dead
Before the War
Appendix
Index

About the Author :

EUGÉNE ARONEANU, compiler of the accounts, was a Romanian who was given the task of drawing up the tables of atrocities for the Nuremberg trials. He died prematurely in 1960.

THOMAS WHISSEN, translator of the accounts, is Professor of English, Emeritus, at Wright State University. He is the author of Isak Dinesen's Aesthetics, A Way with Words, The Devil's Advocates: Decadence in Modern Literature, and Classic Cult Fiction: A Guide to Popular Cult Literature (Greenwood, 1992).

Review :
"Aroneanu, a Romanian, was assigned the task of drawing up the first lists of Nazi atrocities in 1945 for use at the Nuremberg war crime trials. This book is the result of his research. The 100 eyewitness testimonies by concentration camp survivors are intermixed, arranged by subject matter to reflect the chronology of the camps from deportations to liberation... [The survivors] speak of unbelievable horror... No other work documents these crimes against humanity as vividly and powerfully as this one."-Booklist ?[T]his oral history is organized chronologically by camp experience from deportation to liberation. Topics include internment, camp regulations, life in the camps (e.g., labor, sanitary conditios), medical experiences, execution, and the number of dead. The book also includes a list of camps, command posts, and prisons that were used as places of incarceration. The reader will gain from this compilation a vivid and horrifying sense of what life was like in a concentration camp. Recommended for World War II collections.?-Library Journal ?Aroneanu, a Romanian, was assigned the task of drawing up the first lists of Nazi atrocities in 1945 for use at the Nuremberg war crime trials. This book is the result of his research. The 100 eyewitness testimonies by concentration camp survivors are intermixed, arranged by subject matter to reflect the chronology of the camps from deportations to liberation... [The survivors] speak of unbelievable horror... No other work documents these crimes against humanity as vividly and powerfully as this one.?-Booklist "ÝT¨his oral history is organized chronologically by camp experience from deportation to liberation. Topics include internment, camp regulations, life in the camps (e.g., labor, sanitary conditios), medical experiences, execution, and the number of dead. The book also includes a list of camps, command posts, and prisons that were used as places of incarceration. The reader will gain from this compilation a vivid and horrifying sense of what life was like in a concentration camp. Recommended for World War II collections."-Library Journal "[T]his oral history is organized chronologically by camp experience from deportation to liberation. Topics include internment, camp regulations, life in the camps (e.g., labor, sanitary conditios), medical experiences, execution, and the number of dead. The book also includes a list of camps, command posts, and prisons that were used as places of incarceration. The reader will gain from this compilation a vivid and horrifying sense of what life was like in a concentration camp. Recommended for World War II collections."-Library Journal