Synopses & Reviews
This is a unique, eye-witness account of everyday life right at the heart of the Nazi extermination machine.
Shlomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a ?Sonderkommando?, without realising what this entailed. He soon found himself a member of the ?special unit? responsible for removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burning their bodies.
Dispassionately, he details the grim round of daily tasks, evokes the terror inspired by the man in charge of the crematoria, ?Angel of Death? Otto Moll, and recounts the attempts made by some of the prisoners to escape, including the revolt of October 1944.
It is usual to imagine that none of those who went into the gas chambers at Auschwitz ever emerged to tell their tale ? but, as a ?Sonderkommando?, Shlomo Venezia was given this horrific privilege. He knew that, having witnessed the unspeakable, he in turn would probably be eliminated by the SS in case he ever told his tale. He survived: this is his story.
Review
"'A unique participant's account of everyday death and life,' the jacket says. That sense of existential inversion is what comes across most strongly in this book, more strongly than even Levi's greatest work can convey."
The Australian"Venezia reports soberly and seemingly without emotion - and yet the book becomes breathtaking in its forcefulness."
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
"Venezia's experiences during the war is at once both fascinating and disturbing. His description of prewar Salonika and his complicated ethnic/national background certainly help illuminate our picture of the multicultural societies of Europe that the Second World War nearly completely eliminated. He also captures the violence and brutality of Auschwitz in a very readable fashion. His descriptions of the inhumanity of the camp will remain with me for quite some time."
H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online
"A deeply sincere, unadorned description of Venezia's journey through hell ... There are few, if any, better descriptions of the impact of massive psychic trauma on the human soul."
Jewish Book World
"Venezia comes across as a very reliable witness. His language is clear, and he certainly does not idealize the members of the 'Sonderkommando' or his own role in the extermination process. It is a detailed and heartbreaking story, told in very restrained language."
Journal of Contemporary History
"A harrowingly matter-of-fact account."
Boston Globe
"Most Sonderkommando members were systematically killed by the SS. But fate allowed Shlomo Venezia to survive, and the horrific privilege to bear witness."
History Wire
"Shlomo Venezia's unnervingly dispassionate personal record demands to be heard. Interviewer Beatrice Prasquier's brusque questions, answered with painful truthfulness, bring home the lifelong scars this Greek Italian Jew must carry from the ever-present memories of the numberless innocents he helped lead to their grotesque slaughter."
Morning Star
"What is remarkable is on the one hand the lack of anger, the simple language dealing with events that are unforgettable and beyond reality, and on the other hand the fact of Venezia's daily life ever since ... He has never, in his mind, lived outside the camp."
Atsmi Uvsari
"I read many accounts of former deportees, and each time they take me back to life in the camp. But the story told by Shlomo Venezia is especially overwhelming because it is the only complete eye-witness account that we have from a survivor of the Sonderkommandos."
Simone Veil
"This holocaust survivor's testimony, like all others, will be read with fear and trembling."
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate
Review
"An important text for Holocaust scholars."—C. Pinto, CHOICE
Review
"[Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938-1945 is] a refreshing, cohesive, and compelling contribution to the scholarship on racial policy inside Hitler's Europe."—Michael McConnell, H-German
Review
"This is an impressive work that provides important new insights for historians of eugenics/racial hygiene, racial anthropology, the Second World War and the Holocaust."—Bradley W. Hart, European History Quarterly
Review
"These essays provide a wealth of information about eugenics and scientific racism in areas that have been underexplored in the past. The book not only sheds light on Nazi racial ideology and policies, but also on the way that scientists and government officials in other parts of Europe responded to Nazi racial ideology and eugenics in the brief period of German ascendancy in Europe."—Richard Weikart, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Review
"This is an important book that makes a significant and original contribution to the development of the historical literature in this field."—Lisa Pine, Social History of Medicine
Synopsis
It is usual to imagine that none of those who went into the gas chambers at Auschwitz ever emerged to tell their tale - but, as a 'Sonderkommando', Shlomo Venezia was given this horrific privilege. He knew that, having witnessed the unspeakable, he in turn would probably be eliminated by the SS in case he ever told his tale. He survived: this is his story.
Synopsis
In
Racial Science in Hitlers New Europe, 1938-1945, international scholars examine the theories of race that informed the legal, political, and social policies aimed against ethnic minorities in Nazi-dominated Europe. The essays explicate how racial science, preexisting racist sentiments, and pseudoscientific theories of race that were preeminent in interwar Europe ultimately facilitated Nazi racial designs for a “New Europe.”
The volume examines racial theories in a number of European nation-states in order to understand racial thinking at large, the origins of the Holocaust, and the history of ethnic discrimination in each of those countries. The essays, by uncovering neglected layers of complexity, diversity, and nuance, demonstrate how local discourse on race paralleled Nazi racial theory but had unique nationalist intellectual traditions of racial thought.
Written by rising scholars who are new to English-language audiences, this work examines the scientific foundations that central, eastern, northern, and southern European countries laid for ethnic discrimination, the attempted annihilation of Jews, and the elimination of other so-called inferior peoples.
About the Author
Anton Weiss-Wendt is the head of the research department at the Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Oslo, Norway. He is the author of Murder without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust. Rory Yeomans is the senior international research analyst at the International Directorate of the UK Ministry of Justice. He is the author of Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941-1945.
Table of Contents
Preface (
Simone Veil).
Note (Béatrice Prasquier).
Acknowledgments.
I. Life in Greece before the Deportation.
II. The First Month in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
III. Sonderkommando: Initiation.
IV. Sonderkommando: The Work Continues.
V. The Revolt of the Sonderkommando and the Dismantling of the Crematoria.
VI. Mauthausen, Melk, and Ebensee.
Historical Notes.
The Shoah, Auschwitz and the Sonderkommando (Marcello Pezzetti).
Italy in Greece: A Short History of a Major Failure (Umberto Gentiloni).
About David Olère.
Selected Bibliography.