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Books > Humanities > History > European history > From 1900 > Second World War > The Holocaust
In August 1945 Great Britain, France, the USSR, and the United
States established a tribunal at Nuremberg to try military and
civilian leaders of the Nazi regime. G. M. Gilbert, the prison
psychologist, had an unrivaled firsthand opportunity to watch and
question the Nazi war criminals. With scientific dispassion he
encouraged Goeering, Speer, Hess, Ribbentrop, Frank, Jodl, Keitel,
Streicher, and the others to reveal their innermost thoughts. In
the process Gilbert exposed what motivated them to create the
distorted Aryan utopia and the nightmarish worlds of Auschwitz,
Dachau, and Buchenwald. Here are their day-to-day reactions to the
trial proceedings their off-the-record opinions of Hitler, the
Third Reich, and each other their views on slave labour, death
camps, and the Jews their testimony, feuds, and desperate
maneuverings to dissociate themselves from the Third Reich's defeat
and Nazi guilt. Dr. Gilbert's thorough knowledge of German,
deliberately informal approach, and complete freedom of access at
all times to the defendants give his spellbinding, chilling study
an intimacy and insight that remains unequaled.
For nearly fifty years, Sala Kirschner kept a secret: She had
survived five years as a slave in seven different Nazi work camps.
Living in America after the war, she kept hidden from her children
any hint of her epic, inhuman odyssey. She held on to more than 350
letters, photographs, and a diary without ever mentioning them.
Only in 1991, on the eve of heart surgery, did she suddenly present
them to Ann, her daughter, and offer to answer any questions Ann
wished to ask.
When Sala first reported to a camp in Geppersdorf, Germany, at
the age of sixteen, she thought it would be for six weeks. Five
years later, she was still at a labor camp and only she and two of
her sisters remained alive of an extended family of fifty.
"Sala's Gift" is a heartbreaking, eye-opening story of survival
and love amidst history's worst nightmare.
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