"The Promise Hitler Kept" – The First Detailed Report on the Extermination of Polish Jewry by the Nazis - A ...

"The Promise Hitler Kept" – The First Detailed Report on the Extermination of Polish Jewry by the Nazis - A Chilling Testimony from an Eyewitness Who Escaped the Inferno. New York, 1945 – First Edition

"The Promise Hitler Kept" – A Dramatic Account of the Life-and-Death Struggle of a Man Who Escaped from the Hangman’s Noose by the Hungarian journalist Stefan Szende, published by Roy Publishers, New York, 1945 – First English Edition. The first detailed eyewitness report on the extermination of Polish Jewry by the Nazis, as told by an eyewitness who managed to escape and describe the horrors as they unfolded. Extremely graphic and difficult to read. Original dust jacket, complete and intact.

The first detailed eyewitness report on the extermination of approximately five million Polish Jews and other European Jews under the German regime, as well as the first comprehensive report on the conditions in Eastern Poland during the Soviet occupation from 1939 to 1941. The survival story of the Jewish man Adolf Folkman from Poland, who provided his testimony to Hungarian journalist Stefan Szende at the end of the war. Folkman was in Lviv during the German bombings ahead of the invasion of Poland in the first months of the war under Soviet occupation, witnessing the march of the invading German forces into Lviv. He survived countless pogroms and lived in the ghetto until its final "liquidation."

After the German occupation, Folkman worked in a factory. Over the course of two years, during which the Germans reduced the Jewish population of Lviv from 140,000 to a few thousand survivors, Folkman miraculously escaped the fate of his fellow Jews by working as a collector of valuables for the Germans. The book is filled with firsthand, harrowing descriptions of the Nazi extermination machinery in ghettos and concentration camps, as well as numerous accounts of Jewish survival. Folkman describes how, in the early weeks of spring 1943, due to the fear of Gestapo torture, there was a peak demand for poison (prussic acid) among the remaining Jews. Jews were willing to give everything they had – money, gold, jewelry, and diamonds – for a lethal dose of prussic acid. It became common knowledge that if one met a calm Jew, free of anxiety and fear, it meant he had poison in his pocket. He also describes how, at that time, the 50-mile railway line from Lviv to Bełżec was filled with the corpses of Jews who had been shot dead by German guards while attempting to escape by jumping from the train.

As the Gestapo’s noose tightened around the last remaining Jews, Folkman managed to escape from Lviv on July 15, 1943, first to Radomsko, and later to Warsaw. Regarding the fate of the Jews during the liquidation of the Lviv Ghetto, he writes: "Hundreds of Jews hid in the sewers. For many days, they remained in tunnels where the waste of a large city flowed. Many died. Many went insane. Only after fourteen days did the survivors emerge, starving. They stuck their heads out. Their faces twisted into inhuman grimaces. Madness was in their eyes." 

While in Warsaw, he joined the Polish underground, documenting, among other things, how the resistance managed to uncover the Gestapo’s full plan and prepare accordingly. He left Poland on August 18, 1943, and among all Jewish escapees from Poland, he was considered the last to reach freedom and safety in a Western European country.

Thanks to the underground, Folkman secured work with the Todt Organization, after being provided with forged documents that allowed him to pass as an Aryan. He successfully passed a physical examination without being exposed and was sent to Norway, where he became a work supervisor for a group of Polish forced laborers and began planning his escape to Sweden. With no maps, insufficient food, and no mountaineering equipment of any kind, he made his way with a handpicked group of men, aided by the Norwegian resistance, toward the border and freedom. The warm reception in Sweden, the first decent meal he had eaten in years, and his first hot bath renewed his spirit, which had never faltered. He stood firm, ready to tell his story to the renowned Hungarian journalist Stefan Szende, whom he met a few weeks after arriving in Stockholm. As Folkman spoke, Szende typed every sentence on a typewriter. The journalist thoroughly investigated Folkman’s testimony, verifying every possible detail. Folkman swore that this dramatic account of his struggle for survival and escape from the hangman’s noose was entirely true. All the German war criminals named in the book are listed under their real names, and at the time, all were on the list of wanted Nazi war criminals. Similarly, Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish figures appear under their real identities, with only a few exceptions. Folkman lost his entire family, including several brothers, sisters, and their families, his parents, and the extended family of his wife. At that time, he still did not know what had become of his wife, who had fled to Germany under an assumed name.

The book’s title, The Promise Hitler Kept, refers to the promise that Hitler and the Nazi regime fulfilled – the extermination of the Jews. The book was published in Sweden under the title "The Last Jew from Poland", where it received considerable success. Presented here is the first English edition of the book with its rare original dust jacket.

279 pages. Light wear to the dust jacket. Good condition.