Аукцион Bidspirit | As Long As I Remain

As Long As I Remain Alive - The Story of a Dutch Holocaust Survivor from the Sephardic Community of the Netherlands. United States, 1979 - First Edition. Copy Inscribed by the Author. - ”As Long As I Remain Alive” - The personal story of the Jewish survivor Max Rodriguez Garcia, who was imprisoned in several Nazi concentration camps during the war years, as told to the writer Priscilla Alden Garcia. Portals Publishing, United States, 1979 - First edition. Copy inscribed and signed by the author. English. An important publication concerning the fate of the large Sephardic Jewish community of the Netherlands (particularly Amsterdam) during the Nazi occupation. Max was born in Amsterdam to a Jewish family of Portuguese-Sephardic origin. With the German occupation of the Netherlands, he experienced the gradual deprivation of the Jews' rights, was forced to go into hiding, but was eventually captured by the Gestapo and sent to the Westerbork transit camp. From Westerbork, he was deported directly to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. There he survived subhuman conditions, an illness that nearly claimed his life, brutal selections, and forced labor for almost two consecutive years. As part of his duties in the ”Kanada Kommando, ” he witnessed the entire process of extermination in the gas chambers during the months of 1944 and also saw the brutal murder of Italian and Hungarian Jews who arrived at Auschwitz toward the end of the war, as the SS accelerated the pace of the killings in the knowledge that their country's defeat was drawing near. Toward the end of the war, with the approach of the Red Army, Max was evacuated from Auschwitz on the exhausting and infamous ”Death Marches” and transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria and its sub-camp of Ebensee, where he was finally liberated in May 1945 by the American Army while on the brink of death.In the years following the war, Rodriguez frequently recounted his story before various audiences throughout the United States, often remaining for hours after his lectures had ended in order to speak with listeners captivated by his experiences and to answer their questions. The cover is designed with a combination of red and blue vertical stripes against a white background, evoking the striped uniforms of concentration camp prisoners and perhaps also alluding to the colors of the flags of the nations that liberated them. At the bottom appears an emblem composed of a small yellow-and-red Star of David - the badge of shame imposed upon Jews in the camps - beneath which is the number branded on Max's arm at Auschwitz: 139829. VIII, [2], 227, [2] pages. Hardcover with the original dust jacket, complete. Very good condition.