Caps Off . . .

Throughout the entire world, Auschwitz has become known as the Concentration Camp (KZ) in which the bureaucratic, alarmingly and perfectly organized mass exterminations of human beings found its abysmal culmination. Less well known is the first period of Auschwitz in which this Concentration Camp (KZ) was different from many others because Polish people had to live and die there. This book makes unambiguously clear that Auschwitz remains, in the memory of many Poles, a martyrology of its people. Caps Off . . . is the first ever English translation of Mutzen ab . . ., a report about the experiences in the Punishment Company (SK) of the KZ Auschwitz by the Polish journalist and prisoner Zenon Rozanski. This report, based on the immediacy of experience, offers an important contribution to current knowledge about concentration and death camps in National Socialist Germany. This narrative report by an individual Polish prisoner is a voice for the countless, anonymous victims of all nationalities who were exterminated in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. It also brings into focus the reality of an undaunted human spirit who endured and withstood the bestiality of the SS men. Rozanski not only casts into narrative this experience of utter darkness but also captures the rays and glimmers of light, hope, and precious moments of human dignity which penetrated this unbelievably hellish environment.