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Book

The prisoners of Breendonk : personal histories from a World War II concentration camp

Call Number

  • 940.5318 D3116.2 (OSH)

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Publication Information

Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2015]

Physical Description

xi, 340 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Summary

"This absorbing and captivating nonfiction account (with never-before-published photographs) offers readers an in-depth anthropological and historical look into the lives of those who suffered and survived Breendonk concentration camp during the Holocaust of World War II"--

Contents

  • Part 1. The first prisoners: September-December 1940
  • The arrest of Israel Neumann
  • Building Breendonk
  • Facing the wall
  • The first prisoners of Room 1
  • The artist of Room 1
  • Watching the prisoners
  • The Zugführer of Room 1
  • A day at Breendonk
  • Part 2. The first deaths: January-June 1941
  • Changes
  • The first escape
  • Despair
  • A picture-perfect camp
  • Part 3. Camp of the creeping death: June 1941-June 1942
  • Operation Solstice
  • Prisoner number 59
  • A substitution
  • The rivals
  • The plant eaters
  • July 24, 1941
  • The hell of Breendonk
  • The first transport
  • A temporary lull
  • Part 4. A second camp: July-August 1942
  • The Sammellager in Mechelen
  • Transport II to Auschwitz-Birkenau
  • Part 5. Camp of terror: September 1942-April 1944
  • The postal workers of Brussels
  • The first executions
  • The Arrestanten
  • The bunker
  • January 6, 1943
  • The winter of 1942-43
  • Transport XX
  • The chaplain of the executions
  • Two heroes of Breendonk
  • The twelve from Senzeilles
  • Part 6. The many endings of Auffanglager Breendonk: May 1944-May 1945
  • Evacuating Breendonk
  • Journey from Mauthausen
  • End of the supermen
  • The final transport from Neuengamme
  • Part 7. After the war: 1945-present
  • The war crimes trials
  • The final death
  • Breendonk today
  • Afterword: What happened to some Breendonk prisoners and their families
  • Appendix 1. Main deportations from Auffanglager Breendonk
  • Appendix 2. Deportations from SS-Sammellager Mechelen.

Subjects