The literature of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany is so vast as to defy comprehension, yet there remain aspects of the subject that are insufficiently covered or not covered at all. Christopher Browning's fine, harrowing Remembering Survival points us in yet another little-charted direction. It is the history of a Nazi slave-labor camp at Starachowice, in central Poland, where between 1942 and 1944 thousands of Jews were forced to work…to produce munitions for the Nazi war machine…Browning is keenly sensitive to the unreliability of memory, especially memory of distant events, so as he stitches together the story of Starachowice he is especially careful to distinguish between reliable and unreliable evidence. There can be no doubt, however, of the essential truth of this story, a small one when viewed against everything else that happened in that dreadful time, but an important and revealing one, exceptionally well told in Remembering Survival.
In 1942 the liquidation of the Jewish-Polish ghetto of Wierzbnik sent 4,000 Jews to their deaths in Treblinka and enslaved another 1,600 at factory camps in the nearby town of Starachowice. Wierzbnik at its peak had 5,400 Jews, of whom 600 to 700 survived the war, and half of these left testimonies in memoirs or others forms. National Jewish Book Award–winning historian Browning (The Origins of the Final Solution) bases his study primarily on survivor testimonies from the slave-labor camps at the Starachowice factory. Willi Althoff, the first commander of factory security whose killings of Jews were theatrically staged and who killed all Jews infected with typhus, was succeeded by pragmatist Kurt Baumgarten, who preferred keeping workers alive to increase factory production and line his pockets by extorting. Nuanced survivor accounts from live interviews, memoirs and archived accounts depicts some Ukrainian guards as sadistic anti-Semites while others were lenient, well-behaved, or corruptible. As the Soviets approached, the Germans deported the slaves to Auschwitz-Birkenau before retreating. Although too specialized for the casual reader, Browning's authoritative, lucid, and subtly analyzed microhistory of a relatively obscure area of Holocaust history will be of considerable value to scholars. 10 photos, maps. (Jan.)
A scholarly, nuanced micro history of a Nazi slave-labor camp. Browning (History/Univ. of North Carolina; The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942) systematically relates how the Jews of Wierzbnik became the property of the SS, slaves who were rented out as laborers in the neighboring camp of Starachowice. Despite the humiliations, physical abuse, bondage and murder, the war-supply camp was, for a while, a haven for those with work papers. Then there was the local killing Aktion one day in October 1942, and, though the destruction of Nazi human property might have been against state interest, there were many wanton shootings just for sport. A few comparatively decent overseers notwithstanding, the Jews faced the brutal police chief Walter Becker (who was acquitted of war crimes in 1972), the dangerous Ukrainian guards and the Polish partisans. Ultimately, thousands of Jews were transported by rail from Starachowice to Auschwitz-Birkenau for extermination. Browning methodically narrates the tale on a survivor-by-survivor basis. His trenchant, relentless exposition shows how the camp was truly exceptional in its evil efficiency. The text is all the more powerful because the author avoids dramatization or overwrought polemics. A coda describes the rigged postwar trial of Becker and the egregious miscarriage of justice that outraged the author and provoked his study. An important addition to Holocaust studies, evoking the small band of survivors who remembered.
"A chilling account."
"A wonderfully rich, nuanced book. A major work by a major historian of the Holocaust."
"Christopher Browning proves himself once again our indispensable guide through the cruelty and sadness of the larger Holocaust within which his account unfolds. But more: he wrestles agonizingly with the painful question of Polish complicity and the scandalous German acquittal of a monstrous perpetrator. His readers as well as those whose suffering he has recorded stand in his debt."
"A breakthrough in Holocaust historiography—this is vintage Browning."
"There can be no doubt...of the essential truth of this story, a small one when viewed against everything else that happened in that dreadful time, but an important and revealing one, exceptionally well told in Remembering Survival ."
The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley
"A master historian of intimate tragedy."
"Extraordinary and revealing. Browning powerfully and convincingly vindicates the use of survivor testimony as a precious source for the reconstruction of the past."
"Browning is a meticulous and disciplined researcher. What emerges is a highly credible and deeply shocking account of a slave-labor camp where the cruelty and brutality is comparable to the more publicized extermination camps like Treblinka and Auschwitz. An excellent addition to the field of Holocaust studies."
"Remembering Survival is a remarkable book about life and death in a little-known Nazi slave-labor camp as seen from the perspective of Jewish survivors. It brilliantly demonstrates how postwar testimonies can become the building blocks for the historical reconstruction of an otherwise hardly documented past. Like Browning’s Ordinary Men , this book will become a must-read."
"Christopher Browning has written what should become a standard work of Holocaust history, a counterpoint to his classic, Ordinary Men . Remembering Survival rests on the testimony of victims whose searing memories…deepen our knowledge of a neglected part of the Holocaust."
A chilling account.-- "The News & Observer"
