SZMAGLEWSKA SEWERYNA
SMOKE OVER BIRKENAU
Warsaw 1949, "Czytelnik" Publishing Cooperative, pp. 302, format 14.5x20 cm
One of the most important testimonies to the fate of the prisoners and victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau and at the same time one of the first literary accounts of hell on earth.
"Blood fell on the walls, floors, bricks here and tells the story of the people who perished here. They stayed where their blood was spilled. It's nothing that the walls were later whitewashed with lime. These walls are still red."
After being arrested by the Gestapo, Seweryna Szmaglewska spent two and a half years in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where she experienced grueling physical labor and several severe illnesses. When the camp's prisoners were herded on a death march in January 1945, she managed to escape. From the first days of freedom, she proceeded to describe the unthinkable. That's how the first documentary about the Nazi extermination machine was written in a matter of months. The book was published before the end of 1945.
SOFTCOVER PUBLISHER
Condition DB+/ minor scuffs and folds of cover edges, NICE piece