Piotr M. A. Cywinski, "Auschwitz: A Monograph on the Human" (Muzeum Auschwitz, 2022)
Auschwitz is perhaps the best-known memorial site in the world. Epicenter of the Nazi extermination campaign of Europe\u2019s Jewish population, the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp system also held over 400,000 inmates (Jews and Gentiles both) in unspeakable conditions. Famous survivors such as Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi are widely read by high-schoolers and undergraduates, but a synoptic overview of the human experience and emotions of the Auschwitz inmates has long been missing. Piotr M.A. Cywi\u0144ski, the director of Poland\u2019s Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, has produced a monumental 590-page work that seeks to fill this gap. On the basis of tens of thousands of pages of survivor testimony \u2013 some published, some drawn directly from the archives \u2013 Cywi\u0144ski has assembled a topical overview of the Auschwitz \u201cexperience,\u201d ranging from loneliness to empathy, numbness to decency, hunger to suicide, sex to religious faith.\xa0\nAuschwitz: A Monograph on the Human\xa0(Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2022) is a breakthrough new pedagogical and reference tool for scholars of the Holocaust, genocide studies, and World War II.\nPiotr H. Kosicki\xa0is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of\xa0Catholics on the Barricades\xa0(Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of\xa0Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century\xa0(with Wolfram Kaiser).\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies