"Even if you read what I am writing ten times and shudder with horror, you will never be able to imagine the extent ...

"Even if you read what I am writing ten times and shudder with horror, you will never be able to imagine the extent of our happiness when we returned from Buchenwald" - Back from Buchenwald's Hell - Amsterdam, 1945 - first edition - dedicated copy by the author

Terug uit de Hel van Buchenwald - Back from Buchenwald's Hell by K.R. van Staal - Amsterdam [1945] - First edition. An early and detailed testimony from a Dutch prisoner in Buchenwald, describing the horrors of the camp and what the Dutch prisoners, particularly the Jewish prisoners, went through. A dedicated copy by the author to Aaron Fuchs. Dutch. 

Staal describes in detail the structure of the camp, the process of the prisoners entering the camp - the robbery of property, the disinfection and change of clothes while the prisoner was led naked in the camp yard, the overcrowding in the wooden barracks, the daily meager food rations and how the hunger turned the prisoners into human skeletons, the forced labor in the freezing cold, the dysentery and other diseases that raged in the camp, the morning commander who sometimes spent five hours in the freezing cold and going to work daily to the mines to the plaster quarries and the drilling of the tunnels which further exhausted the starving prisoners, the orchestra that accompanied the death row inmates, and the various methods of execution used by the Nazis. He also describes the experiments conducted by the Germans on the bodies of the prisoners, claiming to be in search of drugs for typhus and other infectious diseases.

In one of the chapters, Staal describes a transport of 4,000 Jews from Auschwitz , among them Jews from the Netherlands. They walked for eight days, arriving in cattle cars on a journey that lasted four days, all the while in the cold of minus 14 degrees they did not receive food and water to drink. On arrival at the camp there were more than 800 dead inside. The rest who remained alive suffered from frozen boots, and many of them died in the hot water they were thrown into during the disinfection process on arrival at the camp. Staal details the number of people killed in the camp during the various months in which it operated, and how the murders of the Jews increased when it became clear to the Germans that the Allies were on their way to take over the camp, in such a way that over 4,000 Jews were murdered a few hours before the Allies arrived at the camp.

An important part of the book is the detailed description of the Allied entry into the camp and its liberation, which Staal describes every detail of those days - the Nazi reaction and the panic in the camp. He recounts how one of the death row inmates escaped from the line of those condemned, snatched the uniform of a German soldier under cover of the chaos, and managed to leave the camp towards the Allies, instructing them the way to the entrance gate to the camp. He describes how the prisoners saw the American bombers six times circling over the camp before the forces themselves entered. On the same day, several prisoners managed to snatch weapons from the Germans, and to eliminate some of them even before the liberating forces entered the camp. How the emergency hospital they established in the camp worked, and the desperate attempt to save those who could still be saved. Stahl writes: "We had only one hope - to be able to get out of the center of death alive in our zebra costume... Even if you read what I write ten times and shudder with horror, you can never imagine how happy we were when we left Buchenwald."

In the last part of the book, he describes the findings that were discovered in the camp. The Nazis organized detailed lists of the murdered. Staal himself found 22 books in the camp with lists of Jews who were murdered in Auschwitz, and were kept in Buchenwald. Among other things, a detailed list of the murdered from Holland was found. He also held the Dutch Red Cross and the Dutch government accountable for not doing enough to rescue Dutch prisoners in Buchenwald during the war.

48 p. 20 cm. Minor damp stains on the cover and on the title page, Open tear to the to top right corner of title page, with restoration by paper adhesive, without text damage. Good condition.