Hasag with delivery to Ireland

It may seem that the Holocaust is a thoroughly familiar and exhaustively researched subject, and that nothing on this topic could surprise us any more. Yet the Holocaust was not only the great camps such as Auschwitz or Treblinka. It was also hundreds of smaller camps, their sub-camps and ghettos. Each of them is a separate story deserving a monograph of its own. One such place is Skarżysko-Kamienna, where the first private camp on Polish soil was established, founded by the "Hasag" concern. A camp that consumed tens of thousands of human lives. A camp that seasoned prisoners from Majdanek called "the very bottom of degraded life". A camp in which conditions – oh, the irony – improved once the SS officially took control of it.

(...) The author describes the situation in the camp in considerable detail, focusing above all on the mechanisms that shaped relations between people in extreme situations.

(...) Overall, I rate the work highly, above all because of the author's objectivity and restraint in passing judgement, and his talent for presenting difficult matters, which relations within the camp most often were, clearly and without subjective undertones (...).

dr Andrzej K. Link-Lenczowski

Institute of Jewish Studies, Jagiellonian University