Thursday, June 4, 2015

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps

Author: Nikolaus Wachsmann
Stars: 4
Review by: MandyApgar

This is the sort of thing that one cannot, or more so should not, really say that they enjoyed. Both families on my mother's side were forced to flee Europe due to Hitler so granted that and subsequent history it has not been the easiest thing for me to stomach.
 
Let's face it, people can be evil. Totally and completely evil with no redemptive qualities at all, and those were the kinds of people in charge of these places. One thing the book does very well is detail the history and operations of the camps - how they came to be, what they were before, and how they were run. One has to be methodical doing that and the author is just such that. Although events worldwide do play a backdrop this is the rarest of war era books - the kind that is actually about the subject and not the war itself. Details on daily life, escape hazards, and the grisly background of how the execution chambers came to be and were operated were all covered quite well all on up to the liberation. My only fault with the book is that it seemed to me that, when discussing the most delicate matters, the author became almost too clinical and dry. As a way to distance readers perhaps, but it was fairly obvious that even he almost didn't want to deal with the matter.

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