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Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp
"This learned volume is about as chilling as historiography gets." ―Walter Laqueur, The New Republic
" . . . a one-volume study of Auschwitz without peer in Holocaust literature." ―Kirkus Reviews
" . . . a comprehensive portrait of the largest and most lethal of the Nazi death camps . . . serves as a vital contribution to Holocaust studies and a bulwark against forgetting." ―Publishers Weekly
More than a million people were murdered at Auschwitz, of whom 90 percent were Jews. Here leading scholars from around the world provide the first comprehensive account of what took place at Auschwitz.
" . . . a one-volume study of Auschwitz without peer in Holocaust literature." ―Kirkus Reviews
" . . . a comprehensive portrait of the largest and most lethal of the Nazi death camps . . . serves as a vital contribution to Holocaust studies and a bulwark against forgetting." ―Publishers Weekly
More than a million people were murdered at Auschwitz, of whom 90 percent were Jews. Here leading scholars from around the world provide the first comprehensive account of what took place at Auschwitz.
656 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 25, 2007
The complete book about Auschwitz, there's only very little, if any, that needs be added to this heavy and detailed account of almost every angle about the biggest malicious death factory in the world's history. It's a difficult read, since the various historians whose articles you'll find in this book have no mercy for the reader and tell things as they were, with equally uneasy quoted testimonies of survivors of the Auschwitz camps.
Highly recommended!
Highly recommended!
March 7, 2024
A DIVERSE SELECTION OF ESSAYS FROM PROMINENT HOLOCAUST SCHOLARS
Co-editor Michael Berenbaum wrote in the Preface to this 1994 book, “Auschwitz was the largest and most lethal of the Nazi death camps. Actually it was three camps in one: a killing center, a concentration camp, and a series of slave-labor camps… A generation of historians has spent the last half-century studying the Holocaust… Many of their individual works have been published, but never have they collaborated on a comprehensive historical overview of Auschwitz. This volume brings together their individual talents and scholarship on this most important subject… Until now, there has been no single, comprehensive story of Auschwitz … This work is designed to rectify that situation… Pseudoscholars on three continents have tried to deny that Auschwitz was a death camp, that it had gas chambers and ovens, that lethal Zyklon B was used as a killing agent. That is the climate in which the present work was created, and the presentation of this collective study of Auschwitz should indirectly address some of the issues raised by these charlatans. The work is the collaborative effort of scholars from the United States, Israel, Germany, Austria, Norway, Poland, and France… All the essays are original, written exclusively for this book. Some are based on research that was published elsewhere but that appears here for the first time… in a new formulation.” (Pg. vii-viii) He summarizes, “We face an awful truth: the Allies knew what was happening, and those who knew did not act.” (Pg. ix)
Franciszek Piper reports, “[I] undertook the study of the number of Auschwitz victims … The calculation method draws on… persons deported to the camps, and … reductions in prisoner population caused by transfers to other camps and by releases and escapes. By subtracting the latter figure from the former, one can obtain the number of persons who died in Auschwitz… Jews made up the largest group of deportees… Jewish deportees add up to 1,100,000… The same total can be reached by tallying all the transports to Auschwitz as M. Gilbert listed then in his ‘Atlas of the Holocaust.’ In contrast, the total number of deported Jews included in Reitlinger’s … ‘The Final Solution’ adds up to 851,000… a difference attributable to Reitlinger’s underestimating the number of Polish … and Hungarian… Jews deported to the camp.” (Pg. 68)
Michael Berenbaum notes that Jean-Claude Pressac “relies on a largely untapped archival resource: the records of the construction bureau at the Auschwitz concentration camp, which was responsible for all building projects within the camp complex, including the construction of gas chambers and crematoria… Many of Pressac’s conclusions are debatable; his argument that the gas chambers were not initially designed for genocide, for example, is sure to generate controversy among historians… But his most valuable contribution is the story of how the technology of gassing and incineration evolved over time and was adapted to ever-changing circumstances and demands from SS headquarters.” (Pg. 79-80)
Robert-Jan Van Pelt suggests that the cause of the camp’s filthy condition “was an inadequacy of design, a lack of willingness on the part of bureaucrats far away from the camps to allocate more than a minimum of material and financial resources for the camp’s construction, and an assumption about the camp’s use… which did not materialize… intended or not, the result was the same: … the latrines submerged in excrement…” (Pg. 130)
Pressac and Van Pelt explain in their essay, “In … 1989, Jean-Claude Pressac published a book that presented the history of the construction of the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz as it could be reconstructed…Study of the material in the Central Archives of the Soviet Union … which became available in 1991, has led to this revision of some the author’s earlier conclusions.” (Pg. 183) They state, “To this point [May 1942] Auschwitz had played a completely marginal role in the killing of Jews… the adaptation of the camp for genocidal purposes only started in June 1942… One condition that justified the choice of Auschwitz applied both in 1941 and 1942: the camp’s excellent rail connections.” (Pg. 213)
Andrzej Strzelecki observes, “The Nazis fully exploited concentration camp and death camp inmates, even in death. Practices went far beyond the plunder of prisoners’ personal property or their use as slave laborers. Jews who were killed on arrival at Auschwitz were treated as raw material, their hair, bones, and teeth made of precious metals sold to enrich the Third Reich.” (Pg. 258) He continues, “There is no doubt that hair from the victims of Auschwitz and other camps was used to manufacture … yarn… fabric… and socks… The fat that dripped from the bodies burned in pits or on pyres was collected in ditches dug for that purpose … then used as fuel for the fires that burned the bodies… There is no evidence that human fat was used to manufacture soap, or that human skin was treated to make lampshades… or similar objects in Auschwitz.” (Pg. 261-262)
Robert Jay Lifton and Amy Hackettt note, “The physician who came to be known as ‘Dr. Auschwitz’ for his seeming embodiment of medical evil in the camp was not immediately notorious after the war. Josef Mengele was not among the accused at the Nuremberg doctors’ trial, and only in the 1950s, when he was already in South American exile, did he begin to assume his fiendish stature. But the time Rolf Hochhuth wrote his play ‘The Deputy’ (1964), the figure of Mengele clearly … was intended to represent Absolute Evil.” (Pg. 311)
Helena Kuibica reports, “[Mengele’s] son Rolf … revealed that this father… absolved himself by maintaining that he had not made decisions in Auschwitz and did not feel personally responsible for what had taken place there… he had sought to help the prisoners but had few opportunities to do so. When he had a chance, he could help only a few. He claimed that this main task was to classify the new arrivals as either fit or unfit for work. Although he went to great lengths to classify as many as possible as fit for work… he could not do so in every case, since many of the new arrivals were already half-dead. Nonetheless, he maintained that he had saved thousands of people. Mengele also emphasized that he had not been in charge of extermination and therefore could not be held accountable for it… Mengele asked Rolf not to believe what was written about him in the press.” (Pg. 332)
In another essay, Helena Kubica stated, “Among the crimes that the Nazis committed against humanity, the enormity of the wrongs perpetrated against children and young people stands out in singular tragic dimensions. During the Second World War, children lost their lives in many ways and in many places, but the largest number of then perished in the Nazi concentration camps and centers of mass murder.” (Pg. 412)
Nili Keren recounts, “One of the most extraordinary phenomena of the implementation of the Nazi ‘final solution’ in death camps was a special family camp established in September 1943 for prisoners who had been brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau from Theresienstadt. These 5,000 Jewish prisoners were spared the customary selection process and the subsequent extermination of those ‘unfit for work.’ Instead, the newly arrived were placed in a separate camp… They were allowed to keep their civilian clothes, their hair was not cut, and women, men, and children were allowed to remain together…. No one knew why Theresienstadt prisoners were accorded privileged treatment and assigned to a separate camp…. The Red Cross delegation visited Theresienstadt on June 23, 1944, and was scheduled to go on to Birkenau. However, Red Cross officials were satisfied with the first part of their inspection; their hosts convinced them that Theresienstadt was the final destination and no transports departed from there… the Nazis no longer needed the family camp and therefore could proceed with liquidating the entire camp in July.” (Pg. 429)
Leo Eitinger observes, “Suicide in Auschwitz has been discussed from a psychological point of view on different occasions. It has often been asserted that suicide was rare. That, however, cannot be proved. There are no data on how many of the prisoners who were shot while trying to escape actually were attempting suicide. Nor do we have the data on how many prisoners threw themselves on the electrically charged barbed-wire fences that surrounded the camps. And no one knows how many prisoners went to medical examinations with the intention of ending their lives. Investigations done after the war are hardly representative. No figures are available.” (Pg. 476)
Henryk Swiebocki recounts, “The most famous uprising in the history of the camp was the revolt of Jewish Sonderkommando, who serviced the crematoria of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Facing annihilation, on October 7, 1944, they staged an armed revolt in crematorium IV. The doomed Jews set afire and dynamited the crematorium and fled to the nearby woods. When prisoners in crematorium II heard the shooting and saw the crematorium burning, they fell upon their German Oberkapo and threw him---alive---into the burning oven…. Then they made their escape attempt…” (Pg. 516)
Miroslav Karny points out, “The Soviet offensive was now approaching Auschwitz so quickly that Himmler commanded that the operation of the gas chambers be ceased and that they be disassembled. He was anxious to prevent a repetition of what had happened in the Majdanek concentration camp, when the Soviet Army liberated the camp so quickly that the Nazi criminals had not been able to cover all the traces of their activities.” (Pg. 563)
David S. Wyman states, “a final question remains: How could it be that the governments of the two great Western democracies knew that a place existed where 2,000 helpless human beings could be killed every 30 minutes, knew that such killings actually did occur over and over again, and yet did not feel driven to search for some way to wipe such a scenario from the earth?” (Pg. 583)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying Auschwitz or the Hoocaust.
Co-editor Michael Berenbaum wrote in the Preface to this 1994 book, “Auschwitz was the largest and most lethal of the Nazi death camps. Actually it was three camps in one: a killing center, a concentration camp, and a series of slave-labor camps… A generation of historians has spent the last half-century studying the Holocaust… Many of their individual works have been published, but never have they collaborated on a comprehensive historical overview of Auschwitz. This volume brings together their individual talents and scholarship on this most important subject… Until now, there has been no single, comprehensive story of Auschwitz … This work is designed to rectify that situation… Pseudoscholars on three continents have tried to deny that Auschwitz was a death camp, that it had gas chambers and ovens, that lethal Zyklon B was used as a killing agent. That is the climate in which the present work was created, and the presentation of this collective study of Auschwitz should indirectly address some of the issues raised by these charlatans. The work is the collaborative effort of scholars from the United States, Israel, Germany, Austria, Norway, Poland, and France… All the essays are original, written exclusively for this book. Some are based on research that was published elsewhere but that appears here for the first time… in a new formulation.” (Pg. vii-viii) He summarizes, “We face an awful truth: the Allies knew what was happening, and those who knew did not act.” (Pg. ix)
Franciszek Piper reports, “[I] undertook the study of the number of Auschwitz victims … The calculation method draws on… persons deported to the camps, and … reductions in prisoner population caused by transfers to other camps and by releases and escapes. By subtracting the latter figure from the former, one can obtain the number of persons who died in Auschwitz… Jews made up the largest group of deportees… Jewish deportees add up to 1,100,000… The same total can be reached by tallying all the transports to Auschwitz as M. Gilbert listed then in his ‘Atlas of the Holocaust.’ In contrast, the total number of deported Jews included in Reitlinger’s … ‘The Final Solution’ adds up to 851,000… a difference attributable to Reitlinger’s underestimating the number of Polish … and Hungarian… Jews deported to the camp.” (Pg. 68)
Michael Berenbaum notes that Jean-Claude Pressac “relies on a largely untapped archival resource: the records of the construction bureau at the Auschwitz concentration camp, which was responsible for all building projects within the camp complex, including the construction of gas chambers and crematoria… Many of Pressac’s conclusions are debatable; his argument that the gas chambers were not initially designed for genocide, for example, is sure to generate controversy among historians… But his most valuable contribution is the story of how the technology of gassing and incineration evolved over time and was adapted to ever-changing circumstances and demands from SS headquarters.” (Pg. 79-80)
Robert-Jan Van Pelt suggests that the cause of the camp’s filthy condition “was an inadequacy of design, a lack of willingness on the part of bureaucrats far away from the camps to allocate more than a minimum of material and financial resources for the camp’s construction, and an assumption about the camp’s use… which did not materialize… intended or not, the result was the same: … the latrines submerged in excrement…” (Pg. 130)
Pressac and Van Pelt explain in their essay, “In … 1989, Jean-Claude Pressac published a book that presented the history of the construction of the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz as it could be reconstructed…Study of the material in the Central Archives of the Soviet Union … which became available in 1991, has led to this revision of some the author’s earlier conclusions.” (Pg. 183) They state, “To this point [May 1942] Auschwitz had played a completely marginal role in the killing of Jews… the adaptation of the camp for genocidal purposes only started in June 1942… One condition that justified the choice of Auschwitz applied both in 1941 and 1942: the camp’s excellent rail connections.” (Pg. 213)
Andrzej Strzelecki observes, “The Nazis fully exploited concentration camp and death camp inmates, even in death. Practices went far beyond the plunder of prisoners’ personal property or their use as slave laborers. Jews who were killed on arrival at Auschwitz were treated as raw material, their hair, bones, and teeth made of precious metals sold to enrich the Third Reich.” (Pg. 258) He continues, “There is no doubt that hair from the victims of Auschwitz and other camps was used to manufacture … yarn… fabric… and socks… The fat that dripped from the bodies burned in pits or on pyres was collected in ditches dug for that purpose … then used as fuel for the fires that burned the bodies… There is no evidence that human fat was used to manufacture soap, or that human skin was treated to make lampshades… or similar objects in Auschwitz.” (Pg. 261-262)
Robert Jay Lifton and Amy Hackettt note, “The physician who came to be known as ‘Dr. Auschwitz’ for his seeming embodiment of medical evil in the camp was not immediately notorious after the war. Josef Mengele was not among the accused at the Nuremberg doctors’ trial, and only in the 1950s, when he was already in South American exile, did he begin to assume his fiendish stature. But the time Rolf Hochhuth wrote his play ‘The Deputy’ (1964), the figure of Mengele clearly … was intended to represent Absolute Evil.” (Pg. 311)
Helena Kuibica reports, “[Mengele’s] son Rolf … revealed that this father… absolved himself by maintaining that he had not made decisions in Auschwitz and did not feel personally responsible for what had taken place there… he had sought to help the prisoners but had few opportunities to do so. When he had a chance, he could help only a few. He claimed that this main task was to classify the new arrivals as either fit or unfit for work. Although he went to great lengths to classify as many as possible as fit for work… he could not do so in every case, since many of the new arrivals were already half-dead. Nonetheless, he maintained that he had saved thousands of people. Mengele also emphasized that he had not been in charge of extermination and therefore could not be held accountable for it… Mengele asked Rolf not to believe what was written about him in the press.” (Pg. 332)
In another essay, Helena Kubica stated, “Among the crimes that the Nazis committed against humanity, the enormity of the wrongs perpetrated against children and young people stands out in singular tragic dimensions. During the Second World War, children lost their lives in many ways and in many places, but the largest number of then perished in the Nazi concentration camps and centers of mass murder.” (Pg. 412)
Nili Keren recounts, “One of the most extraordinary phenomena of the implementation of the Nazi ‘final solution’ in death camps was a special family camp established in September 1943 for prisoners who had been brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau from Theresienstadt. These 5,000 Jewish prisoners were spared the customary selection process and the subsequent extermination of those ‘unfit for work.’ Instead, the newly arrived were placed in a separate camp… They were allowed to keep their civilian clothes, their hair was not cut, and women, men, and children were allowed to remain together…. No one knew why Theresienstadt prisoners were accorded privileged treatment and assigned to a separate camp…. The Red Cross delegation visited Theresienstadt on June 23, 1944, and was scheduled to go on to Birkenau. However, Red Cross officials were satisfied with the first part of their inspection; their hosts convinced them that Theresienstadt was the final destination and no transports departed from there… the Nazis no longer needed the family camp and therefore could proceed with liquidating the entire camp in July.” (Pg. 429)
Leo Eitinger observes, “Suicide in Auschwitz has been discussed from a psychological point of view on different occasions. It has often been asserted that suicide was rare. That, however, cannot be proved. There are no data on how many of the prisoners who were shot while trying to escape actually were attempting suicide. Nor do we have the data on how many prisoners threw themselves on the electrically charged barbed-wire fences that surrounded the camps. And no one knows how many prisoners went to medical examinations with the intention of ending their lives. Investigations done after the war are hardly representative. No figures are available.” (Pg. 476)
Henryk Swiebocki recounts, “The most famous uprising in the history of the camp was the revolt of Jewish Sonderkommando, who serviced the crematoria of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Facing annihilation, on October 7, 1944, they staged an armed revolt in crematorium IV. The doomed Jews set afire and dynamited the crematorium and fled to the nearby woods. When prisoners in crematorium II heard the shooting and saw the crematorium burning, they fell upon their German Oberkapo and threw him---alive---into the burning oven…. Then they made their escape attempt…” (Pg. 516)
Miroslav Karny points out, “The Soviet offensive was now approaching Auschwitz so quickly that Himmler commanded that the operation of the gas chambers be ceased and that they be disassembled. He was anxious to prevent a repetition of what had happened in the Majdanek concentration camp, when the Soviet Army liberated the camp so quickly that the Nazi criminals had not been able to cover all the traces of their activities.” (Pg. 563)
David S. Wyman states, “a final question remains: How could it be that the governments of the two great Western democracies knew that a place existed where 2,000 helpless human beings could be killed every 30 minutes, knew that such killings actually did occur over and over again, and yet did not feel driven to search for some way to wipe such a scenario from the earth?” (Pg. 583)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying Auschwitz or the Hoocaust.
October 17, 2016
Everything you wanted to know about Auschwitz-Birkenau, but were afraid to ask. Well, not everything-- that would require volumes-- but for a one-volume work, extraordinarily comprehensive.
Mr. Gutman amazes, first, in compiling an encyclopedic array of material from various experts in their fields, then arranging it either chronologically, or when called for, to maximum dramatic effect. Though necessarily dry in parts when discussing the technical, in others Anatomy reads like a novel.
Though hardly a pleasant story, it is a riveting one, and unique in the annals of man's inhumanity to man. If you're a professional scholar, an amateur history geek, or simply like a good horror story-- or perhaps a bit of all three and looking to find Auschwitz in one book-- here that book is.
Read it, and yes, weep.
Mr. Gutman amazes, first, in compiling an encyclopedic array of material from various experts in their fields, then arranging it either chronologically, or when called for, to maximum dramatic effect. Though necessarily dry in parts when discussing the technical, in others Anatomy reads like a novel.
Though hardly a pleasant story, it is a riveting one, and unique in the annals of man's inhumanity to man. If you're a professional scholar, an amateur history geek, or simply like a good horror story-- or perhaps a bit of all three and looking to find Auschwitz in one book-- here that book is.
Read it, and yes, weep.
April 2, 2023
"Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp", Edited by Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (1998: 638 pages).
This book offers the reader a deep understanding of many topics regarding the death camp. Well documented by highly acclaimed scholars, the student is presented with numerous paths for continuing research. One of the most important books in my Holocaust library.
This book offers the reader a deep understanding of many topics regarding the death camp. Well documented by highly acclaimed scholars, the student is presented with numerous paths for continuing research. One of the most important books in my Holocaust library.
August 21, 2007
This is a good catch-all book on Auschwitz. Very detailed, and interesting. It's a bit long, but not a very hard read.
March 3, 2013
You know, honestly, there's just no way to make some glib comment about this.
February 17, 2015
This book detailed every aspect of Auschwitz, more than most people would want to know but I found it fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews