Review by Choice Review
Debski, a survivor of Flossenburg, challenges common Western assumptions about the nature of the concentration camps, rejecting models by Hannah Arendt, Wolfgang Sofsky, Lawrence Langer, and Tadeusz Borowski. Instead, he offers a "battlefield model," which holds that prisoners often saw their persecution and confinement as part of the ideological or religious struggle against National Socialism. Following the heroic thread of Polish historiography, the author sees in survival a basic means to thwart the enemy's intentions. Drawing attention to the mock military rituals of camp life, Debski uses personal experience to challenge the findings of Terence Des Pres (The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps, 1976) that camp inmates typically suffered the indignities of "excremental assault." At Flossenburg, SS personnel were obsessed with the prisoners' cleanliness, while in other camps and at other times, they were unable to enforce hygienic directives in the camps. Absent from Debski's discussion is mention of occasional Polish collaboration in Nazi crimes against the Jews. This published dissertation complements standard works by Eugen Kogon, Anna Pawelczynska, and Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz, but the book is poorly edited, with numerous typographical errors and inconsistent presentation of Polish diacritical marks. Recommended for upper-division undergraduates and up. J. R. White formerly, Randolph-Macon College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
