Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp

In 1972 the Hamburg State Court acquitted the German chief of police in thePolish city of Starachowice of war crimes committed against Jews. Thirtyyears before, he had been responsible for liquidating the nearby Jewishghetto, sending nearly 4,000 Jews to their deaths at Treblinka and 1,600 toslave-labour factories. This shocking acquittal, delivered despite theincriminating eyewitness testimony of survivors, drives Christopher R.Browning's inquiry. This remarkable story of the survival of almost threehundred Jews draws on the testimony of those who lived to recount thebrutalities of the Starachowice camps. Browning examines the experiencesand survival strategies of the prisoners, and the policies and personnel ofthe Nazi guard. With stories of heroism, of corruption and retribution, andof desperate choices, the ties of family and neighbour, in the end, are thesinews of survival.