Description
Book Synopsis1943: Polish underground fighter John Wiernicki is captured and beaten by the Gestapo, then shipped to Auschwitz. In this memoir, Wiernicki, a Gentile, details "life" in the infamous death camp, and his battle to survive, physically and morally, in the face of utter evil.
Trade ReviewIn this simple but harrowing memoir, Wiernicki recounts his involvement with the Polish underground and his subsequent imprisonment in Nazi labor and death camps. What emerges is a raw expose of the evil perpetrated against millions. Wiernicki, a Polish partisan, was captured by the Gestapo in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. From there he was sent to Buchenwald, and he escaped during a death march in April 1945 as the Germans forced 2,000 prisoners to flee ahead of advancing Allied troops. The author begins his memoir with a brief description of his prewar years growing up in the city of Lwow, his summer vacations, and his year at the military academy of Lwow, where he had planned to spend the next four years. He then writes of his life as a resistance fighter before being captured. Wiernicki, a gentile, recounts the killing of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau and describes his encounters with Josef Mengele and Heinz Thilo, the infamous SS doctors who conducted medical experiments on prisoners. Wiernicki's memoir, which includes 17 black-and-white photographs, is a haunting and intimate account of the Holocaust, written with an almost unbearable clarity.
