I don’t really know what to say about this book… it was was well written and absolutley horrific. I think everyone should have to read this book but at the same time I don’t want anyone to have to experience the sadness and anger it will provoke.
It is believed to be the only complete book written inside Auschwitz and it definitely gave me more deatil, knowledge and understanding of the atrocities that happened there. Although it is a personal account, the author wrote it in the third person and gave the main character the name Hans, as a way of distancing himself from the horrors he experienced.
There really aren’t words to do justice to this book. What humans are capable of is so deeply disturbing and it would be easier to just not read books like this one, to pretend that these nightmares can’t be true, but I think we must. No matter how upsetting it is, we have to read the stories by those who survived, to honour them and to believe them.