Les atrocités de l’enfer de Dachau – “The Horrors of Dachau Hell” – an early and detailed testimony on the atrocities of the Dachau camp, including a description of the various torture methods employed by the Nazis against the prisoners. Published by Jos. Jullien, Liège (Belgium), 1945 – first edition. In French. Rare.
An early and important testimony by a Belgian partisan who, during the war, engaged in sabotage of railway lines and disruption of communication routes used by the Germans. He was captured in Liège by the Gestapo, leaving behind his wife and three young children at home. The Nazis, whom he refers to as “the Nazi Inquisition, ” accused him of every possible charge – “leader of strikes, ” “saboteur, ” “messenger of the Freemasons, ” “agent of British intelligence, ” and more. During the interrogation, his body was tortured with severe electric shocks, yet he revealed nothing about his comrades. From October 1943 until February 1944, he was held in the Esterwegen camp, where conditions were relatively tolerable. After several transit camps, he was transferred on February 15, 1945, to Dachau at the age of 33. In the book, he documents the horrific torture he and his comrades endured in Dachau: being forced to attend roll call in freezing cold, beatings, starvation – and he testifies that not a day went by without corpses of prisoners, whose strength had failed them, being dragged before his eyes and thrown into piles. “This daily corpse transport service was organized in the same manner as the street services in our big cities, ” he writes. He further describes the physical and emotional condition of himself and his fellow inmates in the camp: “Faced with so much misery and abandonment, we no longer had any reaction… The prolonged physical suffering and the ongoing moral torment reached such a peak that we found ourselves forced not to think, because ‘thinking’ was itself torture.” In the second part of the book, he documents one by one, under separate headings, the various torture methods used by the Nazis, describing in detail the horrific events that took place in the camp in each of these incidents. He explains how, each time, the Nazis searched for a new form of sadistic abuse aimed not only at inflicting suffering and death, but also at erasing any trace of humanity from the prisoners. These were unspeakable tortures – some of the greatest war crimes ever committed in human history – almost inconceivable as having been carried out by human hands. On April 29, American tanks entered the camp: “To describe to you our joy is impossible, ” he writes, describing the stages of liberation and the deep gratitude the prisoners felt toward their liberators. He expresses a hope that, in time, everyone will know and understand what the Nazis did to defenseless prisoners who suffered firsthand the gravest horrors since the dawn of human history.
Rare. Only four listings in the WorldCat global library catalog.
72 pages. Very good condition.
