Buchenwald… Dachau… Belsen… etc. By Z. L Smith FIAT Press, [Belgium or Holland], 1945 – First Edition. Dutch. A rare testimony of a former prisoner of the Buchenwald camp right after the end of the war, accompanied by unknown harsh photographs. Red cover with a photograph of prisoners who perished next to a released prisoner walking on his stick, against a wire fence background. extremely rare.
Early documentation of a prisoner in the Buchenwald camp from the day he was arrested by the Gestapo in Belgium, the interrogations, his being sent to the Buchenwald camp, the horrors of the camp, the severe torture he and his fellow prisoners went through, and finally the release. In the introduction, the author writes that many people ask whether the harsh stories about what happened in the death camps are indeed true. In response to the question, he writes: “I will leave it to the common sense of the reader to form his opinion after reading this book”. And adds: “Should I point out to the reader that the names appearing in this book are anonymous?”. The author was arrested at his home in Belgium by the Gestapo on May 5, 1944. He was separated from his wife and taken to the interrogations in the Gestapo basements, where he gave harsh answers in an attempt to extract from him secrets about his underground activities. After about two weeks, he and 220 other prisoners were transported to Germany in cattle cars to the Buchenwald camp. Immediately upon arriving at the camp, they witnessed to execution of one of the prisoners. Upon arriving at Buchenwald, he was interrogated about his origins and asked repeatedly is there any part of his family that is Jewish? An investigative committee led by a German doctor determined his ability to work, and he was put together with 500 other people in a narrow residential building. In the camp, he was employed in forced labor in the quarry of carrying stones and lifting them. In the months he was imprisoned in Buchenwald, he witnessed countless deaths from disease, starvation, and execution, some of which he describes in the book. The descriptions in the book are difficult to read. In one of the chapters there is a harsh description of how some prisoner who was a good friend of him, hanged himself on the camp fence, and how the other prisoners who saw the horrible scene reacted with indifference to the suicide of their friend: “They took his body and carried to the furnace, It doesn’t make an impression on anyone anymore, it happens here all the time.” The author describes the difficult situation that worsened day by day and how only the strong prisoners managed to hold out – the camp became crowded day by day, the food rations dwindled, the number of dead increased daily, and the punishments the Nazis punished the prisoners even for minor things were unbearable. As the rumors about the approach of the Allied forces grew, the Nazis worsened the conditions in the camp, and many of the prisoners at that time didn’t last the harsh sentences.
Among the things it is evident that the author hides many facts that are difficult to describe, and indeed at the end of the book he writes: “Does everything I have told in this book correspond to the reality that was? No, dear reader! The reality is much more horrifying, I have hidden many untold things from you… How is it possible that in the 20th century civilized people committed such acts? That’s a question you will still ask… I only told a few facts, I omitted everything that could harm your mind and soul…”.
The book is accompanied by harsh to view photographs: Russian, Polish and Belgian prisoners with skinny bodies in Buchenwald, bodies being transported for burial by the Allies, the crematorium ovens, prisoners who died moments before the liberation of the Buchenwald camp, Image of Dr. Klein the executioner of the Belsen camp who was responsible for the death of thousands of prisoners, Corpses in the Belsen camp, corpses in the Nordhausen camp, American soldiers next to the corpses of the camp’s SS guards who were shot by them.
Extremely rare. This edition does not appear in the world library catalog “world cat”. (Later editions from 1993 appear there).
111 p. 17 cm. Slight wear on the cover. Good condition.
