Krynki In Ruins by A. Soifer

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Translator: Beate Schützmann-Krebs

From his boyhood in Krynki to partisan life in the Shalker Forest, to the ghetto, to the hunger, thirst, beatings and killings of Auschwitz and a grim succession of death camps, Alex Soifer tells the story of his heroic struggle to survive and fight back.

“The old concentration campers, who had been imprisoned for several years, forgot bit by bit that outside the electric wire there was another world where free people lived in dignity…. It seemed to them as if dozens of years had already passed, and that what was happening there on that piece of earth was a normal occurrence and would remain forever. “Whether we would experience the next day was not certain, and with the red sky, the black smoke and the selections that spared no one, ‘tomorrow’ was no longer in our thoughts…. No one knew the exact date, or even a holiday. A holiday was whenever someone got hold of a piece of bread or a little watery soup. My bedmate was an elderly Jew who prayed silently every day, both at work and at camp and roll call, while looking around intently on all sides.

Year first published: 2022