MAUTHAUSEN Z pobytu a zivota v nemeckem koncentracnim tabore tretiho stupne - MAUTHAUSEN - From the stay and life in a German concentration camp Ph.D., by Antonin Hruban, Prostějov (Czech Republic), 1945 - first edition. A copy with the author's dedication to the Czech-Israeli writer Erich Kulka:" "mému příteli Erichu Kulkovi, Na památku pekelných let Antonín Hruban" - "To my friend Erich Kulka in memory of the infernal years Antonin Horvan".
A powerful publication - the personal memories of the author Antonin Hruban who was one of the prisoners who stayed in Mauthausen - Austria, for the longest time compared to the other prisoners who passed through the camp - in a period of about three years. In his book he describes the daily life in the camp and the difficult events that he personally experienced and witnessed. The author, who belonged to the "National Resistance Group" which operated underground against Nazi Germany after the German occupation, was arrested in October 1941 as the underground's head of telegraph mail and transportation. After being taken to the Gestapo basements and interrogated for 11 hours during which he passed out three times due to the severe beatings, he was sent to prison for 24 hours, where he was sentenced by a military court to be sent to Mauthausen. The Gestapo commander in Brno informed him that he sending him to Mauthausen where "he must die within three months". He arrived in Mauthausen in February 1942, and already at the first reception, two of his friends were executed next to him. In his book he describes in detail the horrible and sadistic acts of the Nazis during all the long months he was held in Mauthausen, in a way that is difficult to describe here. He describes in detail the methods of killing and burning the bodies carried out in the camp, as well as the various forced labor in which the prisoners died as a result of them every day. Despite everything he went through, out of a group of several thousand prisoners who passed through the camp during the three years he stayed there, he and several dozen other prisoners managed to be saved, and to tell his terrible story at the end of the war.
At the beginning of each chapter in the book, a wood cutting of harsh scene from the camp by the Czech painter, graphic artist and illustrator Antonin Kamnik (1886-1959). Near page 122 appears the figure of Hitler made up of sentences that slap him in the face with all the blame heaped on him, and the crimes he committed by K. Public.
The recipient of the book is Erich Kulka (1911-1995) Czech-Israeli writer, historian and journalist who survived the Holocaust. During the war years he was sent to the concentration camps Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Neuengama, and in the years 1942-1945 to the extermination camp Auschwitz. During the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945, Kulka managed to escape the "death march" together with his twelve-year-old son Otto Dov. After the end of the war, he wrote with his fellow prisoner Uta Krauss the book "Death Factory", which is considered a classic documentary about Auschwitz. In Israel, he was one of the most active members of the "Association of Expatriates of Czechoslovakia" and the "Israel-Czechoslovakia Friendship League". In 1977 he was among the founders of the Shimon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Other projects included establishing the World Association of Auschwitz Survivors and publishing the journal "Voice of Auschwitz Survivors".
122 [4] p. Some of the pages detached as they came out of the printing house. (not confirmed in the first place).
