Kenneth Roman was born in Gorlitza, Poland. He was not yet 13 years old when the Germans invaded the country. He and one of his uncles are the only survivors of a large, widely ramified family. As he was no more allowed to go to school, he became an apprentice to an electrician (a Volksdeutscher who treated him very well) and in January 1942 was summoned by the Judenrat to work for Hobag (Holzbau A.G.) at a sawmill in a forced labour camp (barter). 14 September 1942: 2,940 Jews sent to an extermination camp; 60 - among them Kenneth - who worked for Hobag were exempted.

Later he was taken, to the camps at Muszyna (also Hobag) and Mieleg where he worked for Heinkel (airplane factory) under very bad conditions. After 8 months he was evacuated to Wieliczka, where — deep underground in the salt mines -parts for aeroplanes were manufactured. From there he came to the Flossenburg in Bavaria; in a quarry, he had to dismantle Messerschmidt planes. Description of the camp - clean but otherwise terrible conditions: starvation, brutal treatment; all nationalities were represented, more Aryans than Jews. Evacuation of the camp in April 1945 because of approaching Americans. Death march of 15,000 people only 4,000 survived. They were taken by the Americans to Amberg in Bavaria, well fed and cared for. Kenneth Roman went with an Italian fellow prisoner to Italy, served there with the British-Polish army and went later to London. After an inner crisis when he wanted to renounce his Jewish faith and origin - because being a Jew means persecution and suffering - he is now a conscious and wholehearted Jew.

Dr. Rosenblatt was a Jewish prisoner of war (Polish Army) in Germany where Jews were kept apart from the rest of the prisoners under inferior conditions. After his release, Dr. Rosenblatt followed his parents who had escaped to a small ghetto in Poland. In 1942 all small ghettoes in Poland were dissolved and the Jews transferred to one big one. Out of 30,000 Jews, 27,000 were exterminated in Auschwitz. Some 600 Jews who had been living in hiding were rounded up in the Synagogue and shot by Germans and Ukrainians (p.3-4).

In 1943 the women were sent to Ravensbrück, the men to Buchenwald (p.6). After some time a new selection took place this time to a camp in Saxonia. At the beginning of 1945 new deportations took place to Theresienstadt. The inmates there shared their rations with the new arrivals whose physical conditions were most pitiful. After the liberation by the Russians, Dr. Rosenblatt was most impressed by the relief work of Jews, Russians and UNRRA allotted to the youth in the first place.

This report deals with a little-known extermination camp, the “Jugendlager Uckermark”. In January 1945 the authoress, Mrs Breinin of Vienna, who spent a year at Auschwitz-Birkenau had to join the death march of thousands of women to Gross-Rosen, from where they were transported in cattle trucks to Ravensbruck. She was then sent as “Lagerlaeuferin” to the so-called “youth” camp Uckermark. It turned out that this youth-camp was an extermination camp, especially for old, sick and weak women, were still, in the middle of February 1945, about 6,000 people were either gassed or poisoned, also healthy women, women of many different nationalities and of all ages.

When the Tiso regime in Slovakia introduced anti-Jewish laws, Bleich and his brother had to leave high school and attend a Jewish school. Their father’s business was aryanized. On 7 April 1942 Bleich, then aged 17, and his younger brother were arrested by the Hlinka Guard and were sent to Poprad and from there to Auschwitz. The account reports particularly vividly and with many details the unspeakable horrors of that camp. At first Bleich was allocated to road work, later to the building of the crematorium and the Buna works. Atrocities, suicides of the prisoners and murders by the Kapo were daily occurrances. When prisoners, Bleich among them, reported sick, they were given fatal injections or sent to the extermination block 7. Miraculously, Bleich was spared, although twice the lorries to take the victims to the gas chambers, halted in front of the block. Due to starvation and excessive work Bleich became one of the Muselmänner.

His brother Eugen also eventually came to Block 7, and after some time Bleich was told that all the inmates had been gassed. Caused by utter lack of sanitation and vermin, typhoid and boils spread and killed hundreds. When the epidemics endangered also the SS. extensive delousing operations were carried out, but the interminable roll-calls and inspections gave renewed chances for brutalities. In 1943 Bleich was ordered to peel potatoes. As he ate the raw peels, he contracted dysentery and skin diseases and lost this coveted job. He was sent back to building work and collapsed.

In March 1943 he accidentally met a friend, Meyer Mittelmann, who worked in the “Canada” Commando, and due to the energetic efforts of this man and despite many obstacles, Bleich was given medical care, some food and eventually a job in Mittelmann's commando, where he worked until August 1943 and enjoyed the various advantages involved. During that time with the Aufräumunskommando Bleich recalls the arrival of 2 transports: all the 3,000 prisoners of one were suffocated, while the 1,200 prisoners of the second were gassed immediately. Finally B. could not stand the handling of corpses any longer, and in August 1943 he volunteered for work in Warsaw on the site of the old ghetto. During their work, prisoners found hundreds of corpses, but also quantities of goods and valuables.

When the Russians approached, the camp was evacuated, the ill and weak prisoners were shot, the others had to march in the summer heat without water, and the SS shot anyone trying to quench his thirst. In Silesia they were crammed into cattle trucks; many of the prisoners went almost mad with thirst. Dachau was in a state of liquidation, the prisoners stayed there only for 2 weeks and proceeded to Ampfing. They worked on an underground factory and lived in underground huts. When Germany collapsed, an order was given to shoot all inmates, but the commandant of Ampfing did not obey this order and send the prisoners on yet another transport which led them to the liberating American army. After short periods in Munich under American care, at his home town and in the DP Camp Feldafing, Bleich married and emigrated to Australia.

The author was deported from Hamburg to Riga/Jungfernhof on 7 December 1941, together with his wife, 7-months-old child and his parents. The Camp-Commandant was Unterscharfuehrer SS and SD Rudolf Seck. After a few days the camp contained about 5,600 persons. They were crammed into dilapidated stables with no protection from the cold (30-35° Celsius below 0). A special squad had to pull out the corpses of those who were found frozen to death in the mornings; they were piled up in the yard. Seck tried to have them burned, which did not succeed, so 700 were buried in a mass-grave.

At regular inspections Seck took those too feeble to rise from their bunks, outside to have them “bumped off”. The sick quarters were evacuated regularly: the sick were thrown into lorries and taken away to be killed. At roll call Seck made selections of elderly people to be taken away and killed. He boasted of having killed around 5,000 Jews.

On 26 March 1942, Aktion Duenamuende was carried out by Seck and numbers transported to their death. The people in the transport had been told that they were being sent to work at Duenamuende, hence the name.

The author lost his entire family at Jungfernhof in one or the other of the described ways. He reports of savage beatings of men and women on their bare buttocks in front of the assembled crew, carried out by Seck with a cane, until they fainted.

A report by a 56-year-old author on his experience of six months at Dachau and one month at Buchenwald. The Nazis’ methodical education to hateful contempt, cruel ill-treatment and pitiless annihilation of the so-called ‘Untermenschen’.

Vivid description of life in Concentration Camp. The information is “packed” into many short chapters, each an interesting and significant cross section, but together forming a complete readable “film” on the subject.

The book is concerned with the best known camp Dachau, and the most dreaded one, Buchenwald. It is shown that Dachau, although rightly pictured as a living hell, was almost a paradise compared with Buchenwald.

It is emphasised that apart from the purpose of creating terror, another purpose of these Camps is to educate the Nazi youth to ruthless bestiality. It also shows that these Nazi methods at the same time educate unflinching, resolute enemies to Nazidom. Just as Germany's armament rearmed the entire world so their Concentration Camps not only crush, but also create deadly opposition. Ordinary people develop into determined fighters against Nazism. Whilst the book as such shows this development by describing the setting (as done classically in Dostojewsky's “Memoirs of a House of the Dead”).

As the author has been an editor and particularly a picture editor for twenty years and made it his task to observe and note everything in the Camp, he together with a draftsman could illustrate the book by line drawings in the most accurate manner if so desired.

Mr Larsch, a house-painter by profession but out of work at the time, was an active socialist. On 3 November 1933, he was arrested at Bielfeld and sentenced to penal servitude for three years. On 19 May 1935, his wife, mother of four children, was arrested at Essen; ill-treated by detective Schweim (later interned at Recklinghausen); sent to hospital, transferred to Düsseldorf, where she died on 29 May 1935; her smallest child was then three year old.

After his release from jail, Mr Larsch was interned at the police station at Düsseldorf, then sent to Buchenwald. Sadistic atrocities committed by Sommer (sentenced at Munich, 1958).

Free from 26 April 1939 until September 1939; from that time to the end of the War at Sachsenhausen. Foreman in brickyard. April 1945, most efficient bombing of a foundry: 300 dead, all of them prisoners - the free workmen could rush into safety. SS-Lagerführer Freesemann killed an officer who had bailed out of a plane. Ficke, Commander of “Totenkopfdivision.”

Evacuation and death march, April 1945. Destination was the Baltic Sea, where the prisoners should have been embarked and drowned. This was prevented by the quick arrival of the Allies, but many of the exhausted prisoners died on the march.

The authoress was the only child of a well-off manufacturer in Vienna. In 1935 under the influence of the political situation, he moved with his family to Krakow, where he owned another factory. They lived in a most comfortable flat and the daughter studied philology, German and English. She reports here on the situation in Poland of the Jews, after the German army had occupied Poland.

In 1940 they were in Cracow (p.1, 3), in 1941 the Czknstochow Ghetto. This report includes details on Gestapo-chief Degenhard, the deportation to Treblinka of the older people (p.2), forced labour and ill-treatment for the remaining thousand by German SS, Ukrainians and Latvians (p.2-3). The authoress escaped together with her husband to “Nutzjuden” working outside the Ghetto, from there to Warsaw. Details forged documents and a job with the German “Ost Energie A.G.“. After several months of living with the family of a Polish army-officer (belonging, then unknown to them, to the Resistance Movement), everybody living in and arriving at the house was arrested and put in irons (p.4). Then, the men were taken to prison (Montelupe) and later back to the Ghetto, where the intellectuals were shot. The authoress whose husband was a doctor, never saw him again (p.4-5).

The women had to spend two months at Helclow after which all prisoners were transported to Auschwitz. Non-Jews helping Jews: an SS-official, like the authoress a grammar-school mistress, and a lady-doctor, interned as a Resistance-member, helped her to get a job with the Commando “Bauleitung“, where she worked for two years for the Chief, Sturmbannführer Bischof who proved to be human and helpful (p.6); their ‘Model Block’shown to Swedish Control Commission, in 1944; another model block was the ‘Experimental Block’ with lady-doctor Brewda, now London, and Dr. Fleck, his wife and child - the only child at Auschwitz - who returned back to Paris (p.6).

On 17 January 1945 she was evacuated and sent on a two-week death march to the Jiell of Ravensbrück. In February, she was transferred to nearby Malchow labour camp. Liberated on 9 April 1945 (p.6), the march back to Poland.

Since 1946 the author has been working with the Polish embassy in London. She has remarried and had a child; when she was called back to Poland; she left her job and stayed in England.

A report on ill-treatment of the worst kind, atrocities, horrible conditions of life in camps and during transports; mass-murders. Also includes information on the author's deportation from Frankfurt am Main to Minsk where he arrived in 22 November 1941; unbelievably bad conditions; vermin (p.1, 4, 6). The Robert Ley-House (p.1). Wehrmacht and SS (p.1). When a gun was found at the Loot-Commando, left there by Russian workmen, every seventh of the Jewish detainees was shot including a former reserve officer who held both Iron Crosses.

High death-rate because of starvation (p.2, 6, 8) and mass-murder (p.2-5). Unteroffizier Peter Greven late of Cologne, saved the lives of five men of the Heeresbaudienst Stelle on occasion of the massacre of 60 internees. In July 1942, 8,000 Jews were murdered during one Aktion (p.2). Heeresverpflecmagazin: Oberzahlmeister Heinrich (p.2-3) ordered the Yellow Star not to be worn in the Office, his successor did not object, but Oberscharführer Rübe (on 13 March 1943) had the 12 girls and 4 women of the Office led to the cemetery by sixteen Russians to be shot there, including the author's twenty-year-old daughter, his only child. On 26 May 1943, Gestapo-men shot dead every living being at the sick-bay, patients, nurses, children and visitors alike. On this occasion, the author lost his wife who had fallen ill when she learned of her young daughter's fate.

In September 1943, all bachelors and girls were taken to the SS-labour camp in Minsk; the married people and children were never heard of again. In vans said to be transporting 120 men each to the labour-places, the passengers were being killed by burnt gas (p.3).

The author was transferred to the Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke in Budztn, Poland (p.3-4). Ill-treatment by the German foremen; wretched conditions of life; vermin and epidemics (p.4). Loudspeakers recording music during the mass-murder of twenty thousand Jews, on 23 November 1943 (p.4). At Heinkels’ at Milec, a Hauptwachtmeister, late of a police-station at Frankfurt am Main, shot the Baracken-Älteste Zimmermann, because he found the place not clean enough; he was also responsible for cruel punishments and atrocities.

In July 1944, the author was transported to Welicka and in September was sent on a horrible transport to Mauthausen (p.4-6) which turned out to be worse than any of the dreadful places before. Doing incredibly heavy work in the quarry, rushed and beaten up constantly. Mass-murders. After three months, he was transported to the Hermann-Goring Works at the Camp of Linz of about two thousand men. Cruel ill-treatment. Public execution of three Russians who had tried to escape. Air-raid; a bomb killing 110 detainees at Block 13 (p.5). Starvation (p.6); frost; vermin. On 5 May 1945, the author was liberated by the Americans. The Spanish Legion. The Hermann-Goring-Lazarett (p.6).

The author lived in Vienna as a partner and manager of the Austrian Fleischverwertungsgesellschaft (Import and export of meat). When the Nazis came, he lost his job immediately and, some wekes later, was arrested and detained in a school-building, Karajangasse, together with many other Jews, until 1 June,1938, when they - about three thousand - were sent from the Westbahnhof to München; they were horribly ill-treated, and twelve of thern died on the journey (p.2).

At Dachau, the author met some decent and even benevolent people among the SS (p.2-3); he stresses also the decency of two camp-doctors, Dr. Wohlrat and Dr. Bader, whilst the doctor-in-chief would behave beastly as well as all the other SS-men; cruel punishments; informing Blockälteste, especially Dr. Ziffer who was slain by some detainees, after the transfer to Buchenwald (p.3-4). At Buchenwald, conditions were most dreadful - typhoid fever (p.4).

The author who already at Dachau had been a patient at the sick-bay was taken to Sachsenhausen, where the camp-doctor was rightly feared as a devil. Constant bribes for Blockälteste and Kapos, corruptible and informers all of them (p.4).

When his wife sent him a sham-visa for Argentina, procured by the friendly Consul General at Vienna, the author was released and came via Italy to England (p.5).

Mrs Ehrenberg lived with her first husband, an engineer holding a French diploma, Schlama Goldstein, and their little daughter (born 1938) in comfortable circumstances at Lodz, Poland (p.1, 10, 11, 13). Together with innumerable others, they fled from the approaching Germans in September 1933. The situation on the main road proved to be chaotic; she went back to Lodz through burning villages, under the fire of German planes shooting recklessly down at the fleeing people (p.1). Terror at Rawa-Mazowiezka; hostages (p.2); a pastor (Volksdeutscher) ordered the murdering to be stopped. After the occupation of Warsaw, the author's husband and brother returned to Lodz, too, but as the oppression was getting worse, fled to Bialystok (p.3-9), a Polish town, belonging to Russia at the time. When, in February 1940, the author's family had to move into the Ghetto Lodz she pretended to be a Polish Aryan and tried to join her husband with her little child (who soon died there) at Bialystok, occupied by the German troops since June 1941. Although she enjoyed the help of several people, the dangers of her illegal life finally proved too much for her nerves, and she went to live in the Ghetto, in August 1943. Dreams coming true (p.5-6, 9-10, 12). In view of the pending liquidation, her husband insisted that she left the Ghetto, and she used her Aryan document to get released; as she was leaving, the SS-officer who was guilty of the murder and [illegible]JÄ misery of innumerable human beings, gave her a kitten to save its life (p.6).

She then made several - interesting - attempts to rescue her husband (p.7), but could not save him from the worst. At last she was denounced by an informer, Czeslaw Bielilo (p.7, 13) and imprisoned at Bialystok, as, since November 1943, Jews who had escaped from the Ghetto were no longer shot dead on the spot, where they were discovered, but had to be taken to an annihilation camp.

Horrible transport to KZ Stutthof near Danzig. Selected and sent to Auschwitz (p.9-11). There she was an eye-witness of all kind of horrors and atrocities. With the aid of a Polish detainee, she would succeed to hide and rescue Jewish girls from the selections (p.11).

In October 1944, transfer to Bergen-Belsen (p.12-13). Typhoid. She would see Irma Gresse repeatedly but never saw her ill-treating a detainee (p.12). Liberation, on 15 April 1945. Visit to Lodz; of her large family only one aunt had survived.

At Konstanz, Bodensee (p.13), she made the acquaintance of Mr Hajim Ehrenberg, a survivor of Treblinka, whose wife and children had perished. She got married to him, in December 1946, and with the help of the Joint, they emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1949, where they are both working successfully, after a son was born to them, in 1950. (p.13,14).