Description
Book SynopsisDogmar Ostermann, a former prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and ex-Nazi SS physician Hans Wilhelm Munch, talk face to face 50 years after the war. The book's structure follows the events of the Nazi occupation chronologically, adding to the testimonial literature of the Holocaust.
Trade ReviewHans Wilhelm Munch was an SS doctor at Auschwitz-Birkenau and had control over hundreds of prisoners. He was acquitted in a war crimes trial in 1947 despite his role in the deaths of hundreds of inmates. Dagmar Ostermann, born in 1920 in Vienna, was the daughter of an Austrian Jewish father and a German Baptist mother. In October 1942 she was sent to Auschwitz because of alleged illegal contacts with Aryans.
The Meeting is based on a documentary film made by Frankfurter in 1988, in which Munch and Ostermann talked face-to-face over a three-day period. Munch is on the defensive as he tries to avoid making any remark that might designate him as a voluntary party member. He describes Josef Mengele as a rationally thinking, objective scientist, and thought nothing of it when Mengele stated that when he was through with experimenting on twins they would go to the gas chambers like all the others. Munch pictures himself as a quasi-victim, believing that all he did was done under duress. The book adds important Information to the testimonial literature of the Holocaust.
