Memoirs, journals, and verse

L'intégralité du site Internet du Musée d’Etat Auschwitz-Birkenau est accessible en anglais et en polonais. Nous vous invitons en particulier à consulter les rubriques consacrées à l’histoire de l’ancien camp de concentration et d’extermination nazi ainsi que celles détaillant l’organisation des visites de ce Lieu de Mémoire et nos programmes d’éducation. Learn More

Janka Abrami: Last Lullaby She saw the chimneys belching smoke and the black smoke above covering the world with a blanket of doom obscuring the picture of God. She held on to her mother the terror in her dark eyes distorting her four-year-old face with ancient wisdom. "I don't want to go in there for a shower," she cried. "I don't want to go!" "Shash... my pet, don't cry the water won't be cold and I'll hold you tight," the woman soothed her child as they walked into the concrete cage. She couldn't see the chimneys any more nor the dark clouds above nor did she hear the moans and the "Shema Israel" of others as she snuggled close to her mother. All she heard was the loving voice whisper the last lullaby of Auschwitz: "Shash, my darling, Shash..." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn More

Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor's perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century. Learn More

Published in Poland after World War II, this collection of concentration camp stories shows atrocious crimes becoming an unremarkable part of a daily routine. Prisoners eat, work, sleep, and fall in love a few yards from where other prisoners are systematically slaughtered. The will to survive overrides compassion, and the line between the normal and the abnormal wavers, then vanishes. Borowski, a concentration camp victim himself, understood what human beings will do to endure the unendurable. Together, these stories constitute not only a masterpiece of Polish - and world - literature but stand as cruel testimony to the level of inhumanity of which man is capable. Learn More

Rudolph Hoess was Commandant of Auschwitz during the war. He was taken prisoner by the British. Between his trial and his execution he was ordered to write his autobiography. This is it. Learn More

This is a unique, eye-witness account of everyday life right at the heart of the Nazi extermination machine. Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a ‘Sonderkommando', without realising what this entailed. He soon found himself a member of the ‘special unit' responsible for removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burning their bodies. Learn More

This book is an interview with Sonderkommando member Henryk Mandelbaum. He tells of his terrible experiences in the camp. This interview conducted a Polish journalist Jan Południak. Learn More

Memoirs of a Hungarian Jew, a prisoner of Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and Buchenwald. Was brought to the camp as a 17 year old boy. He lost his mother in Auschwitz, two sisters, father and brother. After the war he moved to the United States and settled in California. Learn More

Stanisław Taubnenschlag, (Stanley Townsend) was born on January 30, 1920, in Cracow, into a Jewish family possessing numerous contacts with Polish intellectual circles, and with many Polish friends and acquaintances. He was arrested in June 1942 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, from where, one year later, he was transferred to the Buchenwald camp Learn More