BUCHENWALD - A Memory of Murderers. Salzburg, 1946 - First Edition

BUCHENWALD - A Memory of Murderers. Salzburg, 1946 - First Edition

BUCHENWALD Eine Erinnerung an Morder - BUCHENWALD, A Memory of Murderers, by Hans Berke - An early eyewitness account of the atrocities at Buchenwald from a prisoner who spent three years there! Published by Ried-Verlag Salzburg, 1946 - First edition. German.

"Everyone needs to know how German people and people from many countries suffered and died in the National Socialist death camp... I describe what I personally experienced, saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears...It is impossible to describe all the torments, the endless mental suffering,

the eternal hunger. Only those who experienced it firsthand can appreciate the inconceivable suffering endured by the people in the concentration camps... I swear that nothing in the descriptions is exaggerated. They contain the pure truth!..."

Hans Berke spent three years in Buchenwald. In this book, published shortly after the end of the war, he describes his arrest at home without prior notice, his month long stay in the Gestapo prison, the torture he endured, and his transfer to Buchenwald. He details the structure of the camp and its various wings, how the blocks were formed, the grueling morning routines, the types of prisoners and the symbols the Nazis used to characterize different prisoners, daily life in the camp - forced labor, harsh punishments inflicted on prisoners without reason, the torture prisoners endured in the notorious quarry where prisoners were killed by torture every day, as well as the various types of punishments prisoners faced in the camp (a horrific chapter in itself), including horrific tortures specifically directed against Jewish prisoners - a special chapter dedicated to "Jews in the Camp" describes how from the moment they arrived, they lost their sanity in a short time due to the severe torture and numerous deaths each day. Among other things, Hans describes how every time the Nazi criminal Heinrich Himmler visited the camp, the Jewish prisoners knew that their conditions would soon worsen according to new orders he gave the commanders. Hans managed to repeatedly switch jobs in the camp through various ploys, and thus effectively survived the inferno as his broken body did not give in.

Cover design: Illustration by Erich Rudolf of prisoners executed by hanging from the forest trees.

146 [2] p. Very good condition.