The Journey Back From Hell: Conversations with Concentration Camp Survivors

By Anton Gill

All these years on, how do the survivors of the most horrific episode in world history regard their wartime experiences, and how have they come to terms with their memories? How did their experience of the Nazi concentration camps change them emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and politically? And what are their feelings about their former tormentors today? In talking to some 120 survivors in 14 different countries – including political prisoners and resistance fighters – Anton Gill has produced a masterpiece of oral history that is both an account of the survivors’ lives after liberation and a testament to their courage. First published in 1988, each experience of the ‘journey back from hell’ is unique, and readers are free to draw their own conclusions from what the survivors tell them. But the combined effect of the stories is so poignant and important to the core experience of the 20th century that nobody can afford to turn away – or to forget.