From the Heart of Hell: Manuscripts of a Sonderkommando Prisoner, Found in Auschwitz

This is the full, unabridged testimony of Auschwitz Sonderkommando prisoner Zalmen Gradowski, which was secretly written in the camp and buried there during the Holocaust. The present publication contains all of Zalmen Gradowski’s known writings. It has been carefully translated from Yiddish to English and includes annotations by historians from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. In December 1942, Zalmen Gradowski, a young man with literary talent, was deported by the Germans from the Grodno ghetto to Auschwitz. He arrived there with his closest relatives, including his parents and wife. His family were all murdered in the gas chambers immediately after their arrival at the camp. Zalmen was sent to the very heart of hell – to the Sonderkommando. Prisoners of the Sonderkommando, mainly Jews, were forced to work at the gas chamber and crematoria buildings, where they removed corpses, extracted gold teeth, cut the victims’ hair that was sold by the camp to German textile manufacturers, cleaned the gas chambers after the murders, and burned the corpses in crematoria ovens as well as outdoor burning pits. Wanting to preserve the memory of his nearest relatives, and to inform the world about the extermination, Gradowski began to secretly write his testimony in Auschwitz. This manuscript is an extraordinarily comprehensive literary record of the tragedy that befell the Jewish people during Second World War. It is written in a passionate, at times poetic, language. Paradoxically, in the hell of Auschwitz a writer was born – Zalmen Gradowski. Sadly, Gradowski perished at Auschwitz II-Birkenau most probably during the revolt of the Sonderkommando on October 7, 1944. His manuscript survived hidden in the ground and was discovered soon after the war near the crematoria gas chambers at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. It is above all the priceless testimony of an eye witness to the Holcaust at Auschwitz.