The concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was the site of the single largest mass murder in history. Over one million mainly Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in its gas chambers. Countless more died as a result of disease and starvation. ‘Auschwitz Death Camp’ is a chilling pictorial record of this infamous establishment.
Using some 250 photographs together with detailed captions and accompanying text, it describes how Auschwitz evolved from a brutal labor camp at the beginning of the war into what was literally a factory of death. The images how people lived, worked and died at Auschwitz.
The book covers the men who conceived and constructed this killing machine, and how the camp provided a vast labor pool for various industrial complexes erected in the vicinity. ‘Auschwitz Death Camp’ is shocking proof of the magnitude of horror inflicted by the Nazis on innocent men, women and children. Such evil should not be forgotten lest it reappear.
MY REVIEW
I knew when I started reading this book that some of the images would be heartbreaking and I was not wrong.
In the book you look at the images of the people as they arrived on the trains at the camp and disembark on to the platforms before they were selected and split from their families. They did not know what would happen to them or their fates and it is harrowing now to look at them, some of them smiling and with them not knowing what would most likely be in store for the many.
The book is well written and it tells the story of the camp from its origins through to its expansion and ultimately into the Death Camp that it is best known for today. The topic does well in this book as the author lets the photographs tell the story.
The chapters are well laid out and I liked that you could see the progression and the contrast too between the SS guards and those within the camp. It was not only the photos of the dead and dying that affected me in these books, it is the lack of compassion and the state that the Russians found the camp when they arrived with poor souls and bodies just littering the ground like waste, it is just tragic and I have no words.
This was a book that will stay with me for a long time and I am glad that I read it, for me it is necessary reading and something we should never forget happened and it is a book that I would recommend too – it is 4 stars from me for this one – highly recommended!
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