Škola nenávisti - The School of Hate, by Michail Šolochov - Diary of a Red Army soldier captured as a prisoner of war, taken to a German POW camp, managed to escape and join the partisans, and survived the war. Published by Svoboda, Prague 1945 - first edition. Czech.
Diary of a Red Army soldier in Ukraine, describing harsh scenes of war and direct encounter with the victims murdered by the Germans. Mikhail describes the difficult sights of different areas that his unit reached after the German army left the place after massacring the population there. "Do you think words can describe everything I saw? No they can't. There are no such words... When we saw the German rampage we didn't feel anger... It was clear to us that we had to deal not with human beings but with some kind of monster...".
In one of the battles he and his friends stepped on a mine laid by the Germans, they were captured and stood in a line as the German officer singled out sixteen men who looked Jewish to him. They took them aside and shot them with automatic rifles before his eyes. Mikhail was taken with his friends to a POW camp where he stayed for about two months, and from there was transferred to another POW camp, where he was taken to fortification work outside the camp. In those days he planned his escape. After daily familiarity with the area he knew that if he only managed to sneak into the nearby forest he could easily get to freedom. At one point in the middle of work, determined to escape, he approached the Nazi guard with the shovel in his hand and simply hit him with all his might. The man collapsed on the spot and within a moment he started running to the nearby forest. Later, in the forest, he met partisans who cared for him physically for about two weeks, and he became a partisan fighter like them, surviving until the end of the war.
Rare. Only two copies listed in the global library catalog WorldCat.
37 [2] p. 18 cm. Very good condition.
