This book is a new edition of the account published by Julien Unger at the end of World War II. Written shortly after the events they describe, the work is remarkable for its precision. Julien Unger narrates his experience as a French Jewish deportee and the conditions in which he survived at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other Nazi concentration camps.

Jacques Saurel was born in Paris into a Jewish family that had recently emigrated from Poland. During the war, Jacques’ father was a prisoner-of-war, which for a time spared his family. However, in February 1944, Jacques, his brother, elder sister and mother were interned at Drancy for three months. They were deported with the status of “hostage” to Germany’s so-called “star camp” of Bergen-Belsen.

A Jew from Lodz, Moniek Baumzecer witnessed the collapse of Poland, the persecution of the Jews and their confinement in ghettos. In December 1940, he was consigned to forced labour on Autobahn construction in Germany. He was then sent to the Christianstadt camp in Poland.

When the camp at Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops, Alex Mayer had just one priority: to write. First, for himself, to try to understand and not to forget, but also for those who were no more, who could not bear witness. Having no paper, he began to write his diary on camp office-forms. Gathering up all his forces, he describes the bravery and cruelty, the madness, the small gestures which saved and those which proved fatal.

This book collects all the speeches given by Simone Veil as president of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah from 2002 to 2007. As a survivor of Auschwitz, she speaks from the bottom of her heart and her own memory, matured and enhanced by her national and international political experience.

Théodore Woda puts luck at the heart of his story, showing that, although the Third Reich was intent on destroying all the Jews of Europe, gas chambers or a slow death by starvation and/or mistreatment did not always lie at the end of the road.

Claude Hirsch was born 1931 into an Alsatian Jewish family; Fleeing persecution, the Hirsches were arrested in Lyon by the French militia. They were transferred to Drancy, then deported June 30,1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. On getting off the train, Claude’s mother had the presence of mind to lie about the age of her son. That saved his life. Claude was assigned to forced labour in the Auschwitz III-Monowitz camp.

In 1945, at the liberation of the camp at Buchenwald, more than a thousand young Jews aged from 8 to 24 were waiting for their fate to be decided. The French Jewish Organisation to Save the Children - OSE (Œuvre de secours aux enfants) took charge of 426 boys originating from Central and Eastern Europe. This book brings together the accounts of 15 survivors from Buchenwald who have accepted to share their memories.