The Survivor: How I Survived Six Concentration Camps and Became a Nazi Hunter - The Sunday Times Bestseller

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De overlever is een ontzettend hard, en ruw verslag van de gebeurtenissen die Josef meemaakte in de concentratiekampen. Het is een verhaal dat vertelt moet worden, gezien het een rechtstreeks ooggetuigenverslag betreft van de gruwelen die zich in de concentratiekampen afspeelden. Like the network of concentration camps that followed, becoming the killing grounds of the Holocaust, Dachau was under the control of Heinrich Himmler, head of the elite Nazi guard, the Schutzstaffel (SS) and later chief of the German police. Top image is of the entrance to Auschwitz, 1945, courtesy of Bundesarchiv B 285 Bild-04413, KZ Auschwitz, Einfahrt. In post-war Europe, Lewkowicz lived almost from hand to mouth – the family property in Poland had been appropriated by neighbours – then he travelled to South America to join a great-uncle anxious to find any relation who had survived. Resourceful and adaptable, he worked his way up from factory work and street-trading to become a successful diamond dealer, making a happy marriage and finally settling in Israel, where he lives today. How did Lewkowicz survive when so many of his family, friends and fellow Jews died? “In my mind,” he writes, “there was always hope, though I could see none.” Wat ik wel interessant vond waren Josefs indrukken toen hij jaren later, terugging naar de kampen die nu een toeristische attractie zijn geworden. Dit moet een enorme impact op hem hebben gehad.

Josef recounts the horrors he endured through six different camps until the last camp he was in (Ebensee) was liberated in May 1945. His story is gory and disgusting and hard to read but I feel an obligation to do so in deference to the man who lived through these tortures. If he could endure these abominations who am I if I can’t read his words?This begins the second stage, in which there is a danger of deformation. As the intense pressure on the mind is released, mental health can be endangered. Frankl uses the analogy of a diver suddenly released from his pressure chamber. He recounts the story of a friend who became immediately obsessed with dispensing the same violence in judgment of his abusers that they had inflicted on him. Foreword to Trotzdem Ja zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager, Hans Weigel, Penguin, München, 2009, ISBN 978-3328102779 (reprinted from 1977) No one expected the Germans to arrive with such speed and without a shot being fired, writes Josef Lewkowicz of September 8 1939. In the small town of Działoszyce, southern Poland, where the teenage Josef and his parents lived, the persecution began immediately.

Zusammen mit seinem Vater kommt er in ein Arbeitslager. Das Leben, das er dort führt, ist unbeschreiblich grausam. Ständige Angst vor willkürlichen Erschießungen, Hunger, Kälte, menschenunwürdige Unterkünfte. Jeder letzte Rest Menschenwürde ist schnell verschwunden. A truly harrowing account, humanely told in fast-paced, affecting prose. You won’t be able to put it down — even in those moments where the truth feels too hard to read." — Sophy Roberts, author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia - The body is the first element to break out of this stage, responding by big appetites of eating and wanting more sleeping. Only after the partial replenishing of the body is the mind finally able to respond, as "feeling suddenly broke through the strange fetters which had restrained it" (p. 111). apathy after becoming accustomed to camp existence, in which the inmate values only that which helps himself and his friends survive, and

Hitler was obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the “pure” German race, which he called “Aryan,” and with the need for “Lebensraum,” or living space, for that race to expand. In the decade after he was released from prison, Hitler took advantage of the weakness of his rivals to enhance his party’s status and rise from obscurity to power. Frankl observed that among the fellow inmates in the concentration camp, those who survived were able to connect with a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersed themselves in imagining that purpose such as conversing with an (imagined) loved one. According to Frankl, the way a prisoner imagined the future affected his longevity. In a 1991 survey conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Man's Search for Meaning was named one of the 10 most influential books in the US. [7] At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, the book had sold over 10 million copies and had been translated into 24 languages. As of 2022 the book has sold 16 million copies and been printed in 52 languages. [8] Lawrence Langer, Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), p. 24. Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager ("A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp").