I'm not interested in academic or purely historical writings, more in getting a "feel" for what it was like to be interned in these infernal places, the day to day to the long term psychological consequences for the survivors. I'm specifically looking for any books or memoirs written by former guards. Are there any books, websites, etc that you'd recommend?
I couldn't find this on the list of FAQs so I apologize if this has been asked before.
Thanks :)
read "Night" by Elie Wiesel. It's a really brutal, true, biographical account of a normal Jewish kid's experience of the holocaust.
You absolutely have to watch Claude Lanzmann's masterful nine-hour-long Shoah documentary which concentrates on the death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and Chelmno. This is by its nature not a pleasant subject and Lanzmann takes his time to really let things sink in. It is also the only documentary I know of that includes not only interviews with survivors, but also with many perpetrators (some with hidden camera) as well as, and this is especially rare, the reactions of Polish neighbours of the death camps. Try this 45 minute part on Treblinka (first 45 minutes of this video) for starters.
As you can imagine, there are not a whole lot of camp guards who have written their memoirs. They all did their utmost to bury that part of their lives as thoroughly as possible. These are the closest that I can recall off the top of my head to what you are looking for:
Klee, Ernst, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess. " Those were the days": the Holocaust through the eyes of the perpetrators and bystanders. Hamish Hamilton, 1991. (also published as Klee, Ernst, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds. " The Good Old Days": The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. Konecky Konecky, 1991.): the voices of various perpetrators (members of the Einsatzgruppen, death camp SS officers) and bystanders (truck drivers,etc) as they emerge through official and private letters, court documents, diaries and more. Very confrontational and eye-opening.
Rudolf Hoess' Commandant of Auschwitz was written in prison as he awaited trial (and execution). It is a curiously dispassionate statement of facts.
Books by survivors are very plentiful, there are literally hundreds from Auschwitz alone. Here's a short selection:
If this is a man by Primo Levi was written in 1946, just a year after Levi had returned to Italy from Auschwitz. It has an immediacy and a clarity of vision that many later memoirs lack. Levi had the admirable ability to see the good as well as the bad under the most trying of circumstances.
Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account by physician and inmate Dr. Miklos Nyiszli who was forced to assist Mengele.
Treblinka: A survivor's memory by Chil Rajchman is one of the few memoirs on Treblinka as only about 50 inmates survived this camp (following a mass escape). It was written in 1944-45 and has some errors but is overall as close as you can get to a wartime first-hand account.
Gideon Greif's We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz features the stories of eight members of the Sonderkommando in charge of processing the bodies of inmates that had been gassed at Auschwitz.
Richard Glazar is another Treblinka survivor and one of the witnesses in Lanzmann's Shoah documentary. His Treblinka memoir is called Trap with a green fence but I haven't read it yet.
Blatt, Thomas Toivi, Sobibor: The Forgotten Revolt is another one I haven't read yet. As with Treblinka the only survivors of this death camp are the ones who managed to escape successfully during a revolt. Both these death camps deserve much more attention than they usually get as their stories are amazing and horrifying.
This is just a starter list, if you tell me what kind of camp you are interested in I might be able to offer more specific suggestions.
I'm specifically looking for any books or memoirs written by former guards.
I would check out Sereny, Gitta. Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder. London: Deutsch, 1974.