This was Auschwitz. Warsaw, 1945 - First edition.

This was Auschwitz. Warsaw, 1945 - First edition.

To jest Oświęcim - This was Auschwitz. By Dr. Philipp Friedman. "National Publication of Political Literature", Warsaw 1945 - one of the earliest and most important publications ever published about the horrors of the Auschwitz death camp - the first and rare edition.

British parliament members who were sent to Germany have returned to London... Mrs. Studd made the following statement: “Everything written and said about German concentration camps does not contain an exaggeration. However, there is a worse camp than Buchenwald and Dachau, which is Auschwitz, where since 1942 over 3.5 million people, mostly Jews and Poles, have been killed…”. In fact, Mrs. Studd is right... the only mistake that can be attributed to Mrs. Studd is that the number of 3.5 million victims of Auschwitz is low”.

Early publication aimed to bring the atrocities that occurred at Auschwitz to the world's attention. Based on leaked information from Nazi-occupied areas during the war, from the mouths of prisoners and witnesses who had the courage to tell their stories to the outside world while they were happening. The writer set himself the goal of taking all the testimonies that were published during the war, each from a subjective point of view of the person, and uniting them into one comprehensive connection that includes the full picture rising from them all together. In addition to publishing the horrors to the world, which was stunned by the revelations of the atrocities that occurred, the purpose of the book was to serve as material that would lead to the conviction of Nazi war criminals who were apprehended after the war and brought to trial.

For the first time, the medical experiments carried out by the Nazis were fully exposed here, as well as the way the laboratories in the camp operated, the torture facilities in the camp, and the horrifying punishments the Nazis inflicted on the prisoners, and the way the crematoria operated, the direct responsible parties and those who gave orders to execute in the camp, the German schemes in murdering the members of the Sonderkommando unit who were involved in burning the bodies, and the way the prisoners’ arms were tattooed, the number of Jews sent to Auschwitz by country of origin, the horror that took place in the death industry trading in the camp, the fate of the children in Auschwitz, as well as the attempts to escape and resist in the camp, and more.

Friedman himself served as a member of the Main Committee for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, and as part of his work he took part in taking testimonies from many prisoners who survived Auschwitz in March-April 1945 - among them the prisoners Dr. Otto Volkan, Dr. Jacob Gordon, and Hannah Kempel. In addition, to complete the picture, the author used materials that he found in the archives of the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, which included numerous testimonies of prisoners, as well as materials collected by the Soviet Commission of Inquiry into the crimes committed at Auschwitz (the commission's conclusions were published on May 7, 1945).

The author Dr. Philip Friedman [1901-1960] was a Polish Jewish historian. After the fall of Poland at the beginning of World War II and the Nazi occupation of Lvov, he hid outside the ghetto throughout the war. He survived the war but lost his wife and daughter. After liberation, he served as director of the Central Committee for Jewish History, which collected data on Nazi war crimes. This study is considered the pioneering and comprehensive of the publications published on Auschwitz to the present day and is the first to be published from his own works. Friedman testified at the Nuremberg Trials. After the war, he moved to the United States, where he taught in Colombia.

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109 p. 20 cm. Spine reinforced with adhesive tape. A slight tear in the corner of the cover. overall good condition.