Thanks to Vladimir Putin, it’s hard to read and enjoy normal novels these days—and hard not to be political. Here’s a book that shows us what happens when totalitarianism takes root in Europe. These little-known stories are based on the Polish author’s experiences in Auschwitz and Dachau during World War II—portraits of people who’ve been stripped of all human rights and reduced to the status of animals scrounging to survive.
If this sounds too unpleasant to consider, remember that past is prologue. Apart from the 6 million Jewish Holocaust victims, more than 1.5 million Poles suffered ethnic cleansing under the banner of “Germanizing Poland”—and there will be millions of Ukrainians still left in Ukraine once Putin is finished destroying cities and starving civilians. What fate can we expect to befall those survivors who don’t want to become Russians? The Nazi blueprint for annihilation is likely sitting on Putin’s nightstand, along with reports on the health (or lack thereof) of the political prisoners he’s already locked up in what he calls “work camps.” Reviewed on March 10, 2022