Lengyel was a surgical assistant in Transylvania when she was deported to Auschwitz; she was able to secure work in an infirmary, a job that ultimately saved her life. This 1946 memoir is an unflinching account of her time in that area, her interactions with Dr. Josef Mengeleand her observations of the medical experiments performed on inmates. A deeply uncomfortable read, Lengyel’s memoir is a necessary living, breathing document. King of the Jews byLeslie Epstein Let’s move on to the one history book you’ve chosen, The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial 1963-65 by Devin O Pendas. We’ve talked about this already a bit, but can you tell me how the trial came about? How was it received and what were the “limits of the law” mentioned in the subtitle?

Best Holocaust Survivor Novels (45 books) - Goodreads Best Holocaust Survivor Novels (45 books) - Goodreads

Yes, it’s a good read. I think it’s an important read. What it also brings out well is the public reactions to, and the wider significance of, the Auschwitz trial. We’ve made a big deal of it and that’s in part because there was massive media coverage, largely because of the way Fritz Bauer mounted the trial. Bauer was determined to ensure there was media coverage. He was determined to ensure that victims and survivors were brought from all around the world to give evidence, a bit like the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.

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Yes, there’s another book that I could have put in, Rebecca Wittmann’s book on the Auschwitz trial, Beyond Justice. Both, in different ways, point up that the West German choice to use the ordinary criminal law definition of murder was totally inappropriate for trying people who had been involved in a genocide. Collective violence is different from individual violence. The Beasts of Buchenwald: Karl & Ilse Koch, Human-Skin Lampshades, and the War-Crimes Trial of the Century (Buchenwald Trilogy, #1)

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What changes then is this terrible period, the 1950s. From the late 1940s onwards, the Cold War takes precedence for the Western Allies. They start seeing former Nazis as useful in the fight against Communism, and West Germany as useful in the fight against Communism. So from then on, Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of West Germany, and his government prioritized the rehabilitation of former Nazis and granted amnesties, early releases and cut sentences. The Allies—the Americans particularly—and West Germany were wholly of one mind on this. What I find most difficult is actually confronting the subject matter. The subject matter itself is so disturbing, so upsetting and incomprehensible. Anyone who’s looked at this—and I’ve spent years and years and years trying to get my head around it—will still, on occasion, find it utterly incomprehensible, despite being able to give an account of it. It’s a very curious paradox. Let’s move on to sociologist Gerhard Durlacher’s The Search: The Birkenau Boys. He was a child during Auschwitz and wrote this book in the 1980s. It’s a search for the other boys who were taken there with him, right? How much does the politics that still bedevils this whole area of historical enquiry interfere with your work? Does it constrain you in any way? Is it something that you’re constantly dealing with, or is it an inevitable part of the work and something that you’re happy to embrace? Cindy wrote: "How is And Then There Were None or On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet about the holocaust? Just because it's set during World War II doesn't make it a holocaust book. It needs to be about the Jews or Germany or the concentration camps."Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) A physician’s assistant, Olga Lengyel was one of the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Her memoir is one of the earliest accounts by a survivor we have of that camp. Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1947. A lot of the West German public didn’t follow the trial at all, and even those who followed it were pretty hostile to it. But I think that it was terribly important in bringing the issue so vividly to public attention that it could no longer be ignored. It galvanized a younger generation into feeling that there was a generational fight that they had to take on. I guess it depends what you mean. Is it a book that denies the Holocaust? Or is it a book about Holocaust deniers, like Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory? The above book makes brief mention of the important topic that Jarmila raised: PTSD affecting Holocaust survivors. The author mentions it when he describes the day of his liberation at the end of a 12-day Hunger March. Here is the quote: