THE MORNING LIST
For this third week of the 2025 school year, The World of Books first of all offers you, as we approach 80e anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camp of Auschwitz (January 27, 1945), an essay by the director of the Auschwitz museum, Piotr Cywinski, on the level of the deportee. Also this week, Ivan Butel’s book on Spanish Paralympic swimmer Sebastian Rodriguez and the democratic transition in Spain after Franco’s death in 1975; texts on freedom signed by Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, opponent of the Al-Assad regime, in Syria; the new collection of poetry by Jacques Darras; and the remarkable first novel by Espérance Garçonnat.
HISTORY. “Auschwitz. A monograph of the human”, by Piotr MA Cywinski
Drawing on hundreds of testimonies, but also on his association with survivors with whom he was close, the Polish historian Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz museum, has brought together an impressive collection, which relates to different themes relating not only to not the functioning of the camp, but the consequences on the victims of the rules of this separate universe.
As he recalls, Auschwitz “was a system which aimed to dehumanize its victims and deprive them of any clear and clear reference to what they had known in their normal lives”. Civilization and all of its most basic rules were nullified, giving way to something else, another thing modeled by the SS.
The analyzes are deliberately collected, in order to let the voices of survivors be expressed. One of the contributions of the work is to show to what extent the testimonies are rich in many areas, often beyond what we think. In essence, it reveals an important point. The outside view has often refused to see issues that are regularly raised. Subjects like sexuality are there, for those who want to perceive them. Cywinski emphasizes how they shouldn’t call for value judgments – except regarding those who created this world.
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