Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“The degradations of the death camps, and the prospect of his own imminent end, propel Zalmen Gradowski to an act of witness that rises now and then to Biblical heights of eloquence. To read this tragically riven collaborator in the Holocaust is to be shaken to the bone.” * J. M. Coetzee *
“Gradowski astonishes with fresh insights that only a camp insider could possibly have. . . . [C]ogent, frank, and sensitive—well worth a long pondering. In the book’s incisive afterword, Professor Arnold I. Davidson concludes that Gradowski ‘left us a written consolation of courage, determination, and posthumous victory. He was and remains a hero’. Indeed, until we learn from this Sonderkommando member, none of us can think ourselves truly knowledgeable about the Shoah.” * Arthur B. Shostak, Jewish Book Council *
"Drop whatever you are doing right now and go order the first complete English translation of his manuscripts, newly published as
The Last Consolation Vanished. You may never be able to read another Holocaust-related book again.” * Dara Horn, Jewish Review of Books *
“These two historically precise and shattering Yiddish-language testimonies by Zalmen Gradowski rank among the most important documents of the twentieth century. An outstanding translation by Monet, and two fine essays accompanied by a superb critical apparatus by editors Davidson and Mesnard bring these documents of murder and resistance to life like no edition before. The outcome is a major achievement in Holocaust historiography.” * Robert Jan van Pelt, author of 'The Case for Auschwitz' *
