Hermann Langbein

People in Auschwitz Hermann Langbein

Commendation Quotes: Coming generations who want factual enlightenment about what happened . . . will find it in Langbein's book.--"Salzburger Nachrichten" Commendation Quotes: Both sides of the barbed wire of Auschwitz. . . . Langbein resists generalization and black-and-white characterization.--"HTV Magazin" Commendation Quotes: Monumental. . . . Free of self-pity, sentimentality and cliche. . . . Always painstaking about the truth, outlining the reality of Auschwitz . . . So precisely to investigate . . . the problem of the "Auschwitz Universe" . . . and to think it through required extraordinary strength of character, [and] relentless industry.--"Domino" (Zurich) Commendation Quotes: This is a scrupulously scholarly achievement and will become a classic of Holocaust history.--"Jewish Book World" Commendation Quotes: A comprehensive sociological-psychological study. . . . Voluminous correspondence with Auschwitz survivors and innumerable conversations complete the picture and correct subjective judgments.--"Flensburger Tageblatt" Review Quotes: Hermann Langbein, then a communist activist, was a leading member of the underground movement in Auschwitz concentration camp, and an acute observer of the situation there. His memoir is one of the foundation stones of research on Auschwitz, an indispensable contribution to the complex and fearsome reality of the camp.(Yehuda Bauer, director of the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem) Review Quotes: The preparation of this classic for the English-speaking world makes one of the most important and powerful survivor accounts of Auschwitz accessible to the West, and introduces general readers to the mind and experience of a crucially placed and astonishingly observant witness to the Holocaust. In the first-person literature created by survivors and victims in the ghettos and concentration camps, "People in Auschwitz" ranks as an historical document with works like "The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow", and the memoirs of Buchenwald survivor Eugen Kogon, "The Theory and Practice of Hell". Langbein's epic, at long last, also serves as a moral antidote and historical counterweight to the memoirs of the notorious Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, first published nearly fifty years ago.(Charles W. Sydnor Jr., author of "Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945") Marc Notes: Bibl. ref. & index; Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Commendation Quotes: Educators and teachers should seize this work as a report that one will scarcely forget, nor should one be permitted to [forget].--"Israel Forum" Commendation Quotes: Unquestionably, Langbein is one of the best experts on this material.--"Wiener Tageblatt" Commendation Quotes: Remarkable, sober.--"Suddeutsche Zeitung" Commendation Quotes: This report of human civilization's fall into Hell must be read by anyone who wants to master Germany's past.--"Berliner Morgenpost" Commendation Quotes: Remarkable, sober.--"Suddeutsche Zeitung"Commendation Quotes: Documentation out of the depths of Hell.--"Aufbau" Commendation Quotes: First published in German more than 30 years ago, this modestly titled memoir provides a unique account of the Third Reich's most notorious death camp. . . . in weaving together these uncomfortable truths with the most comprehensive analysis of any survivor memoir, Langbein's "People in Auschwitz" represents an indispensable addition to English-language literature on the Holocaust.--"German Studies Review" Commendation Quotes: An objective diagram of the Satanic realm.--"Die Welt" Commendation Quotes: Hermann Langbein, then a communist activist, was a leading member of the underground movement in Auschwitz concentration camp, and an acute observer of the situation there. His memoir is one of the foundation stones of research on Auschwitz, an indispensable contribution to the complex and fearsome reality of the camp.--Yehuda Bauer, director of the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem Commendation Quotes: The preparation of this classic for the English-speaking world makes one of the most important and powerful survivor accounts of Auschwitz accessible to the West, and introduces general readers to the mind and experience of a crucially placed and astonishingly observant witness to the Holocaust. In the first-person literature created by survivors and victims in the ghettos and concentration camps, "People in Auschwitz" ranks as an historical document with works like "The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow," and the memoirs of Buchenwald survivor Eugen Kogon, "The Theory and Practice of Hell." Langbein's epic, at long last, also serves as a moral antidote and historical counterweight to the memoirs of the notorious Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, first published nearly fifty years ago.--Charles W. Sydnor Jr., author of "Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945" Commendation Quotes: Langbein's book is a must not only for reparations council authorities and their reports. It is of equal significance for school and university students, teachers, historians, librarians, and for all politically conscious people. Whoever tries today to suppress [what happened at Auschwitz], and states the opinion that similar things happen today, is a fool or a sympathizer with criminals of the lowest order. Possibly Langbein's book also can serve as instructive reading for those evil individuals who always approach the subject in bad faith.--"Die Mahnung" (Berlin) Commendation Quotes: For generations of historians this work . . . will be a mine of discovery.--"Die Zukunft" (Vienna) Publisher Marketing: Hermann Langbein was allowed to know and see extraordinary things forbidden to other Auschwitz inmates. Interned at Auschwitz in 1942 and classified as a non-Jewish political prisoner, he was assigned as clerk to the chief SS physician of the extermination camp complex, which gave him access to documents, conversations, and actions that would have remained unknown to history were it not for his witness and his subsequent research. Also a member of the Auschwitz resistance, Langbein sometimes found himself in a position to influence events, though at his peril. "People in Auschwitz" is very different from other works on the most infamous of Nazi annihilation centers. Langbein's account is a scrupulously scholarly achievement intertwining his own experiences with quotations from other inmates, SS guards and administrators, civilian industry and military personnel, and official documents. Whether his recounting deals with captors or inmates, Langbein analyzes the events and their context objectively, in an unemotional style, rendering a narrative that is unique in the history of the Holocaust. This monumental book helps us comprehend what has so tenaciously challenged understanding. Review Citations:

Choice 12/01/2004 pg. 729 (EAN 9780807828168, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Langbein, Hermann Hermann Langbein (1912-1995) was born in Vienna. In 1938 he was a member of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, then he was interned in various French camps. Following the German conquest, he was transferred to Dachau, then to Auschwitz, where he remained for two years. There he was a leading participant in the international resistance organization in the camp. After liberation he became general secretary of the International Auschwitz Committee and later secretary of the Comite International des Camps. Among the many important works he wrote or edited are "Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1938-1945" and "Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas". Contributor Bio:  Friedlander, Henry Henry Friedlander was professor of history in the department of Judaic studies at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and coeditor of the 26-volume "Archives of the Holocaust Series".