In mid-1943 Nazi Germany entered a crisis from which it was to emerge vanquished. Faced with a shortage of manpower in armaments factories, the Third Reich sent concentration camp prisoners to work as slaves. While the genocide of the Jews and the Gypsies continued at extermination camps, numerous outside "Kommandos" were set up in the vicinity of the large concentration camps. The Dora Camp, located in the center of Germany, was one of the most notorious. Originally a mere Kommando attached to Buchenwald, it became one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. There prisoners were put to work in a huge underground factory, building V-2 rockets, the secret weapon developed by German scientists in an attempt to reverse the course of the war, under the direction of Wernher von Braun. In this dispassionate but powerful account, André Sellier, himself a former prisoner at Dora, tells the dramatic story of the camp, the tunnel factory, and the underground work sites. He has utilized all available documents as well as unpublished testimony from several dozen fellow prisoners. He recounts the horrors of everyday life at Dora—prisoners dying by the hundreds and indescribable suffering—and the murderous "evacuation" of the camp by railroad convoys and death marches, which took place in early 1945 and led to the death of thousands of prisoners. Illustrated with 20 pages of photographs and drawings, and 24 maps.
A chilling first-person account of activities, death, and survival in the concentration camp where sixty thousand slave laborers built V1 and V2 rockets in subterranean caves.
This powerful, wide-ranging history of the Nazi concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora is the first book to analyze how memory of the Third Reich evolved throughout changes in the German regime from World War II to the present. Building on intimate knowledge of the history of the camp, where a third of the 60,000 prisoners did not survive the war, Gretchen Schafft and Gerhard Zeidler examine the political and cultural aspects of the camp's memorialization in East Germany and, after 1989, in unified Germany. Through the continuing story of Mittelbau-Dora, from its operation as a labor camp for the V-1 and V-2 rockets to its social construction as a monument, Schafft and Zeidler reflect an abiding interest in the memory and commemoration of notorious national events.
Shocking linkages between Nazi concentration camp Dora, Nazi rocket scientists, and the American space program? Did the grandest technological achievement of the 20th century have origins in the Holocaust? Half a century ago, did a group of brilliant scientists make a Faustian bargain that still stains the foundation of our reach for the stars? Once you read PLANET DORA, you will never watch the launching of the Space Shuttle in quite the same way again. Index. Maps. Photos.
During World War II, Mittelbau Dora Concentration Camp housed the most top-secret factory in Germany. Deep in a labyrinth of dark underground caves running through the Harz Mountains, emaciated slave laborers from Buchenwald and other camps worked under the lash of brutal Nazi guards, struggling to manufacture the world's first ballistic missile-a weapon for which the world had no defense! By April 9, 1945, the prisoners had given up all hope of being rescued. Having no food or water, they dragged themselves to the infirmary to die. The Journey of Private Galione is a compelling historical account that reveals how a single soldier on a lone mission: . Found the camp and saved the prisoners . Caused the discovery of Nordhausen, Buchenwald, and other camps . Beat the Russians to the world's most advanced missile technology . Changed world history "My God, what a book! The story of your family is enthralling . . ." -Yves Besn, Dora Survivor and Author of Planet Dora "An amazing story, and when I read it to the survivors at our Board of Directors they were touched." -Marie-Claire du Bois, daughter of a political prisoner who died at Ellrich and Secretary of the Belgian Association of the Survivors of Camp Dora "In a few more days I would have died. John Galione and his fellow soldiers saved my life!" -Michel Depierre, Dora Survivor "I was moved to tears." -Jimmy Esposito, WOBM-AM Radio Talk Show Host
The Silesian town of Bedzin lies a mere twenty-five miles from Auschwitz; through the linked ghettos of Bedzin and its neighbouring town, some 85,000 Jews passed on their way to slave labour or the gas chambers. The principal civilian administrator of Bedzin, Udo Klausa, was a happily married family man. He was also responsible for implementing Nazi policies towards the Jews in his area - inhumane processes that were the precursors of genocide. Yet he later claimed, like so many other Germans after the war, that he had 'known nothing about it'; and that he had personally tried to save a Jew before he himself managed to leave for military service. A Small Town Near Auschwitz re-creates Udo Klausa's story. Using a wealth of personal letters, memoirs, testimonies, interviews and other sources, Mary Fulbrook pieces together his role in the unfolding stigmatization and degradation of the Jews under his authoritiy, as well as the heroic attempts at resistance on the part of some of his victims. She also gives us a fascinating insight into the inner conflicts of a Nazi functionary who, throughout, considered himself a 'decent' man. And she explores the conflicting memories and evasions of his life after the war. But the book is much more than a portrayal of an individual man. Udo Klausa's case is so important because it is in many ways so typical. Behind Klausa's story is the larger story of how countless local functionaries across the Third Reich facilitated the murderous plans of a relatively small number among the Nazi elite - and of how those plans could never have been realized, on the same scale, without the diligent cooperation of these generally very ordinary administrators. As Fulbrook shows, men like Klausa 'knew' and yet mostly suppressed this knowledge, performing their day jobs without apparent recognition of their own role in the system, or any sense of personal wrongdoing or remorse - either before or after 1945. This account is no ordinary historical reconstruction. For Fulbrook did not discover Udo Klausa amongst the archives. She has known the Klausa family all her life. She had no inkling of her subject's true role in the Third Reich until a few years ago, a discovery that led directly to this inescapably personal professional history.
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award: “This valuable resource covers an aspect of the Holocaust rarely addressed and never in such detail.” —Library Journal This is the first volume in a monumental seven-volume encyclopedia, reflecting years of work by the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which will describe the universe of camps and ghettos—many thousands more than previously known—that the Nazis and their allies operated, from Norway to North Africa and from France to Russia. For the first time, a single reference work will provide detailed information on each individual site. This first volume covers three groups of camps: the early camps that the Nazis established in the first year of Hitler’s rule, the major SS concentration camps with their constellations of subcamps, and the special camps for Polish and German children and adolescents. Overview essays provide context for each category, while each camp entry provides basic information about the site’s purpose; prisoners; guards; working and living conditions; and key events in the camp’s history. Material from personal testimonies helps convey the character of the site, while source citations provide a path to additional information.
This volume engages with memory of the Holocaust as expressed in literature, film, and other media. It focuses on the cultural memory of the second and third generations of Holocaust survivors, while also taking into view those who were children during the Nazi period. Language loss, language acquisition, and the multiple needs of translation are recurrent themes for all of the authors discussed. By bringing together authors and scholars (often both) from different generations, countries, and languages, and focusing on transgenerational and translational issues, this book presents multiple perspectives on the subject of Holocaust memory, its impact, and its ongoing worldwide communication.
In the Shadow of Dora spans two very different decades from the Nazi concentration camp of Dora-Mittelbau to the coast of central Florida in the late 1960s; the book tells the story of the real life intersections between the horror of the Third Reich's V-2 rocket program and the wonderment of the Apollo missions. Eli Hessel, a brilliant young Jewish mathematician, finds himself deep beneath a mountain where he is forced to build Nazi rockets. When he is finally freed from this secret underground concentration camp, he immigrates to New York, studies astrophysics, and is recruited by NASA to help build the largest rocket ever to rise above a launch pad: the Saturn V. To his shock, though, he will be under the command of former Nazi scientists Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, both of who were at Dora. As America turns to the moon and cheers for rockets that lance the sky, Eli is swallowed up by the past and must cope with memories he thought were safely buried. This is a novel that asks questions about memory, morality, technology, and how the past influences the present. If we clamp down images of horror, will they always ignite and rise up on us? "This is a harrowing journey of survival, one that traces the indomitable spirit of one lone man as he spirals deeper and deeper within the Holocaust--while also recognizing what it takes, minute by minute and day by day, to survive decades into the future. This painful yet beautifully written novel adds to the necessary literature of the Holocaust. Hicks is determined to undo the erasures of time while revealing our humanity with a clear-eyed lens. This is what the art of the novel was invented to do." --Brian Turner, author of My Life as a Foreign Country and Here, Bullet "Patrick Hicks has managed to bring two of history's greatest events down to the molecular level in the extraordinary character of Eli Hessel, a survivor of the Holocaust and a member of the vast team of scientists that put a man on the moon. This story is gripping in its tragedy, thrilling in its detail, and unforgettable for its protagonist, whose will to not only survive, but thrive, live, and love is a testament to the human spirit. In the Shadow of Dora is tenacious, just like its hero. I'll never forget it." --Peter Geye, author of Northernmost and Wintering "In the Shadow of Dora is an astonishing novel. With a poet's eye and meticulously lyric prose, Patrick Hicks unspools a harrowing tale that begins in a Nazi concentration camp and ends on the Apollo 11 launch pad. It is between these two extremes--the most base of the basest of evils and the highest of all human achievements--that Eli's story unfolds. Hicks' novel is fundamentally a narrative of inquiry and self-interrogation: Is the past what defines us? Does the future redeem us? How can you know if you're dead? This is a profoundly moving book." --Jill Alexander Essbaum, New York Times Bestselling author of Hausfrau "Spanning decades and continents, In the Shadow of Dora reveals in aching detail the heights of human ingenuity and the depths of human cruelty, and, most importantly, the ways those heights and depths are inextricably intertwined in the history of the twentieth century. This is a revelatory novel." --Joe Wilkins, author of Fall Back Down When I Die and The Mountain and the Fathers "In this compelling novel based on historical facts, Patrick Hicks places America's glittering quest to land on the moon squarely inside the dark shadow of the Holocaust. Few novels I have read so effectively and disturbingly question the relationship between the triumph of technological achievement and our willingness to ignore injustice." --Kent Meyers, author of The Work of Wolves and Twisted Tree
