Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz, Shlomo Venezia (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2009), xvii + 202 pp., hardcover 22.95, pbk. 14.95
The SS did not plan on prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau's Sonderkommando surviving. It would be undesirable for them to transmit their knowledge, and they usually were killed after a few weeks of service in the crematoria. But Shlomo Venezia survived. And yet, for decades he kept silent about hi...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2011
|
| In: |
Holocaust and genocide studies
Year: 2011, Volume: 25, Issue: 2, Pages: 316-319 |
| Review of: | Inside the gas chambers (Cambridge, UK [u.a.] : Polity Press, 2009) (Steinbacher, Sybille)
|
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
|
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The SS did not plan on prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau's Sonderkommando surviving. It would be undesirable for them to transmit their knowledge, and they usually were killed after a few weeks of service in the crematoria. But Shlomo Venezia survived. And yet, for decades he kept silent about his eight horrific months in the death camp. Essentially, he says, he never had a normal life: “nobody ever really gets out of the crematorium” (p. 155). After his liberation from the Ebensee sub-camp of Mauthausen, Venezia became extremely ill with tuberculosis, spending seven years in hospitals, where no one asked him about his time in the camps: no one wished to hear about it. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1476-7937 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Holocaust and genocide studies
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/hgs/dcr035 |