Here is a really stomach-churning account of the Nazi death camps. It is written by a Hungarian journalist, who brings his professional eye to describing how he survived. I was amazed it is not more famous. The Introduction tells me this is because it has only recently been translated from the Hungarian. The book begins with the author, Jozsef Debreczeni, being captured in June 1944. Arriving at the first of the camps, the old, young, and female are separated out to the left. Then the Nazis say that those on the left will get to ride in a truck up the hill, so anyone who feels they cannot walk up the hill should also go to the left. Debreczeni nearly takes the offer, but is fortunate to hear an existing prisoner whisper to him to stay. Of course all those on the left go directly to be gassed.
Those on the right go on to hard labour, which is pretty horrifying, but not nearly so bad as what happens when he is somehow sent on to a hospital camp. Here he lies naked, 2-3 to a bunk, in huge dormitories with almost nothing to eat, and with no one clearing up the sewage, so it is ankle deep at all times. They do hear news of the front, so they understand that the Nazis have lost, but the question is if they can stay alive long enough for the Russians to get to them. When the Red Army appears with sausages and throws it on his bed I felt like weeping.
One thing that really surprised me in this story was his account of how much of the camp order – and how much of the decisions on who and how to deprive of food – was made by fellow prisoners. Apparently the Nazis created a hierarchy, and those prisoners at the top were, in his view, quite merciless to those below. They loom as much larger villains than their actual captors. Once the Nazi soldiers decide to run away, what is interesting is the prisoner hierarchy run away too, and while none are caught in the author’s camp, in others they were hanged by the other prisoners.