Читать книгу Caps Off . . . - Zenon Rozanski - Страница 9

This book has nothing in common with the so-called literature. It is a collection of true events that took place during my stay in the Punishment Company (SK) of the Concentration Camp Auschwitz. A few witnesses to these events have also survived the Camp and are now providing the “proof of truth.” All names mentioned in this book are real.

I limit myself, in writing down these facts, to a truthful, photographic reproduction of a reality which until recently constituted my daily life.

In order to make my work easier, I have selected from the immense fullness of the multifarious events those which placed me personally closer to the reality of the life in the Camp. My experiences are, however, not unusual. If every former prisoner of a Concentration Camp would write down his personal memoirs, they all would have in common the same sense despite the variety of events they experienced because every prisoner would have felt in a similar way the spirit of the Concentration Camp.

I dedicate this book to the “old guard” of Auschwitz whose bloodily earned experience and comradely sacrifice saved quite a few comrades who arrived later. I dedicate it to those who were still able to experience freedom and to those who fell in front of the Black Wall of the Execution Block, Number 11.

Hannover, 1947

The Author

Zenon Rozanski, a journalist, was born on 10.01.1904 in Warsaw. Rozanski was imprisoned in the KZ Auschwitz from 1941 to 1944. At the end, he was camp senior in the adjacent camp of Buchenwald, Eschershausen-Holzen, near Holzminden. Rozanski lived after the collapse of the NS dictatorship in Hannover, and in 1948 he emigrated to Brazil.