Holocaust - Concentration Camps, World War II - Prisoners of War, World War II - War Narratives, World War II - Personal Narratives, Prisoners of War, Prisoners of War - Biography, World War II Narratives

Human Race

Name: Human Race
Author: Robert Antelme
ISBN: 9780810160613

by Robert Antelme, Jeffrey Haight (Translator), Annie Mahler

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Overview

Arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Dachau, Robert Antelme recovered his freedom a year later when François Mitterand, visiting the camp in an official capacity, recognized the dying Antelme and had him spirited to Paris. Antelme's story of his experiences in Germany--his only book--indelibly marked an entire generation, "a work written without hatred, a work of boundless compassion such as that is to be found only in the great Russians."

Also available: On the Human Race: Essays and Commentary

About the Author, Robert Antelme

Antelme was 26 years old when, in 1943, he joined a French Resistance unit in Paris headed by Francois Mitterand. The Human Race was his sole publication. He died in 1990.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A member of a French Resistance group headed by Francois Mitterrand, Robert Antelme was arrested by the Gestapo in June 1944, sent to Buchenwald, then to a work camp in Germany. First published in 1947 and now in its first English-language translation, this moving memoir is a testament to Holocaust survivors' furious desire to remain human, even as the Germans, through forced starvation, reduced them to near-skeletons, ``nothing but plumbing for soup.'' Writing with lucidity, detachment and meticulous observation, Antelme (who died in 1990) describes the camp hierarchy whereby kapos , German common criminals serving on the lowest rung of the SS administrative ladder, tried to set political prisoners, convicts and conscientious objectors against one another. His transfer to Dachau and its liberation by the Allies brings to a close a harrowing journey through the human depths. (June)