Bidspirit auction | The Yellow Star – Memoirs

The Yellow Star – Memoirs of Shmuel Binyamin Unsdorfer from the Death Camps – London, 1961 – First Edition - The Yellow Star – autobiography and Holocaust memoir by Shmuel Binyamin Unsdorfer. A moving account of his experiences as an observant Jew in the concentration camps and factories of the Nazi Reich. Published by Thomas Yoseloff, New York and London, 1961 – first edition. The memoirs of a boy whose childhood was shattered under the Nazi machinery of terror and whose manhood was forged in the hell of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Unsdorfer was born the son of a prominent rabbi in Bratislava – a major “mother community” of Czechoslovak Jewry. His first direct encounter with antisemitism came in the late summer of 1939, while attending a Jewish youth club in Bratislava, where he and his friends were surrounded by a mob of Nazi rioters who drove them from the club with cries of “Jews out!” Because of his father’s prominent status and the essential nature of his position, the family was permitted to remain in the city even after the German occupation. At this stage, only Jews whose skills and positions were deemed indispensable remained relatively untouched in the heart of a bleeding Europe under the rule of the Reich. The Unsdorfer family lived in the city’s ghettos in relative safety until 1944 – the year in which Germany launched its fanatical final effort to bring the campaign to a conclusion. In an attempt to save their lives, the father, mother, and their young son fled to a castle near Bratislava, relying on forged Argentine passports. At a certain point, however, the family was captured, deported to the town of Sered, and from there sent directly into the inferno of Auschwitz. In his account of those years in Sered, Unsdorfer describes the transports of Jews deported to Auschwitz, assembled each week in groups of 1,000. He recounts families being torn apart, children separated from their parents amid bitter weeping, and husbands and wives parting in the knowledge that one of them was being deported into the unknown. Like all those sent to the death camp, the members of the family were separated immediately upon arrival. His father and mother were sent to their deaths; only the son survived. At only 19 years of age, the author became a prime candidate for forced labor in Nazi factories. He was sent to Buchenwald and from there transferred to an aircraft factory at Nieder-Orschel. Throughout the grueling ordeal and the daily terror, despite the brutal and relentless abuse inflicted by the SS men, which he describes at length in his book, Unsdorfer and his fellow prisoners maintained their fervent religious faith and an unbroken spiritual determination. With the end of the war and the arrival of liberation, the painful contrast between the joy of those around him and the Jewish tragedy became starkly apparent. As the author describes it, the Czechs around him cried out “Home! Home!” as they danced, embraced, and celebrated, while the Jewish survivors sank to the floor, knowing that for them there was little hope of reunion. Only then could they fully confront the loss of their loved ones who had perished in Auschwitz and would never share the moment of liberation. The very idea of “home” had become a tragedy – a place that no longer existed and never would again. Even freedom itself was overshadowed by the knowledge that they had been liberated only to mourn, for the rest of their lives, one of the greatest catastrophes ever to befall the Jewish people. 205 pages. Previous owner’s inscription. Hardcover with the original dust jacket, both complete. Very good condition.