spoken for

Rating: 10

This is indeed one of the most extraordinary account I have ever read. Of course, they are all extraordinary (surviving in itself is a feat) but this guy… wow.

Right off the bat, however, while he says that escaping death when it came to Auschwitz was a miracle, that luck contributed to his survival. He refers to luck more than once but I will tell you now, this was no accident. He was not “lucky” – there are no coincidences.

I don’t feel I’m giving away anything by telling you all this, as it’s all in the preface to the book and on page one of the first chapter, but Sim Kessel was hanged at Auschwitz. But by a miracle, his rope broke. Then followed another miracle that would save his life. This was after a myriad of other miracles that had kept him alive to that point. There would be more miracles to follow, too, including survival of the death march when Auschwitz was evacuated.

I have a hard time describing his story by anything other than “wow.” And now, as I think about it, this may have been the first account I’ve read by someone from France. This is my third book to read about life in Auschwitz from a man’s perspective. It seems most of the autobiographical books I have read besides those three and The Pianist were from the perspective of women. Kessel’s perspective of Auschwitz is the same, yet also very different from that of Wiesel or Muller. Like other accounts I have read, authors of prefaces and book jackets try to persuade you not to be critical of the author’s writing because he was not an author by trade and that he wrote things as he knew. I have found that when this is said, the story is all the more compelling. Writer or no writer, it does not change the story.

One thing that really stood out with me was on page 58 of my copy:

Nor could our treatment be considered exactly slavery. For throughout history it was in the slaveowner’s interest to keep their slaves alive. The Nazis had no such motivation, since in reviving the custom of slavery they did it with the difference that they wanted their slaves to die. After all, they were never threatened with a shortage of forced manpower.

In the bottom of my heart I have always known that that was true, yet I have referred to the forced labor of the Holocaust as “slave labor.” But Kessel is right, it wasn’t slavery, it was just death. I am hesitant now, to use that phrase in regards to WWII.

One might think that by now, with all of the accounts I have read, that they all would be the same, that there could not be any more new information gleaned. However, every account brings a new person’s perspective to the table. Kessel’s gives me more into what went on in the men’s camp, many “little” things here and there such as when the first kapo gives his speech and says that the “inmates” must keep themselves clean or be chastised with a club, that “it is a graver offense to have fleas than it is to do sabotage work.” A different perspective, I think, than one you might get from Corrie ten Boom, for example, who was thankful for fleas as they kept Nazis out of their block.

Kessel also states on page 102 that “you had to learn every language spoken in camp – German, Russian, Polish, Yiddish; eventually a combination of these four became the special dialect of Auschwitz.” That is something I had never heard before, but now, thinking about it, it does make sense.

Towards the end of the book, Kessel talks of the last of the trip between Auschwitz and Mauthausen. First the death march, then a death train. The train was unlike what you usually hear of, these cars were open on top and the prisoners were forced to lay alongside and atop one another. Many died on the way and some were then sentenced to death by those deaths as they were now trapped beneath the bodies of others. Kessel describes how when they stopped somewhere in Czechoslovakia some civilians came to help, bringing food and tossing it to the prisoners in the open cars. However, the SS soon realized what was going on and opened fire on the civilians who then ran screaming, except for one Good Samaritan (as Kessel referred to them) who lost his life that day. Many accounts of that type of thing describe how the civilians were indifferent or even hostile towards the prisoners. I am not surprised to hear of kindness, but I am left to wonder how many would have been kind rather than indifferent, if they didn’t think they would lose their lives.

Things like that stand out at me all throughout this book.

One final thing then I will end this probably incoherent review. Many of the accounts I have read talk about how mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, siblings – how they would be so crazed with the situation and hunger that they would bitterly fight one another for food even minutes before their deaths in the gas chambers or elsewhere. Many of these accounts are honest in that they did not take part in activity like this. Not surprising when one considers that they survived the whole ordeal — behavior like that was not usually conductive to survival or indicative of a sound mind. However, Kessel, too, is honest and he talks many times of how the way of life in Auschwitz required fighting for one’s life. He is not proud of the way he or others acted, but he states that it is what it is.

In closing, this book is a definite must read for anyone with even a hint of interest in WWII and the Holocaust or anyone who believes our history should not be forgotten, the victims must be remembered.