Planet Dora: A Memoir Of The Holocaust And The Birth Of The Space Age

by Yves Beon, Michael J. Neufeld

An extraordinary memoir by a survivor of the Nazi camps, Yves Béon, Planet Dora is a recollection of life and death in a concentration camp like no other. Dora was a cavernous underground factory cut out of solid rock, where life was like a nightmarish scene from thousands of prisoners beaten, starved, killed, and living underground for weeks at a time. The purpose of all this brutality was to build the world's first operational the V-1 and V-2 missiles, Hitler's vengeance weapons.Some of Germany's most brilliant engineers were involved with production at Dora, including Werner von Braun, who after the war went on to become the father of the American space program. It was his Saturn V rocket, designed with the help of his wartime comrades, that put the first man on the moon; while the Saturn V project was headed by the same man who had been the director of slave labor in Dora. In fact, some of the very rockets built in Dora were packed up after the war and shipped to New Mexico to serve as the seeds of the U.S. space program. In a very real sense, the greatest technological achievement of the twentieth century had its origins in the enslavement and murder of thousands of innocent people, the down payment of a Faustian bargain that still tarnishes the foundation of our reach for the stars.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 27, 1997

Reviews

[Lanny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sickening. Too depressing to finish, but well written.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Talons of the Eagle mentions Dora, so I decided it was time to read this book. (I keep pulling it out of my non-fiction section thinking it's sci-fi.) It's amazing how much science is built upon unethical practices like slave labor, espionage, and cover-ups. Beon does an excellent job of describing Dora's atrocities using a shared narrative drawn from his own experience instead of writing a first-person memoir. (The description on the back cover is a bit misleading.) Definitely worth reading if you can stomach it.

[Andy Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

working men to death in the name of a death weapon. When it's finally over, all the engineers get to come to America and work on missiles to make more potential death. Oh wait, we call that the space race. Heartbreaking story of the depravity of mankind....

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is why I get disgusted by anyone wearing a NASA shirt. This book is why my studies are in Nazi Germany. At once to prove that America is just as evil, if not more so. But also to see what was done in the name of Justice, freedom and science and at what cost. If that doesn’t make sense to you then read this book, quickly followed by Annie Jacobsen’s “Operation Paperclip”. Fuck America. Fuck the Nazis and fuck NASA.