Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 193

In this comprehensive work, hailed by Le Monde as a "monumental study," Hermann Langbein shatters the myth that all prisoners of Nazi concentration camps passively let themselves be slaughtered. A prisoner himself and one of the leaders of resistance at Auschwitz, Langbein documents a detailed history of the individual camps and inmate self-government, including the struggle for camp domination between the political prisoners and the convicted criminals. Langbein also recognizes the various ethnic groups-Germans, Austrians, Poles, Russians, Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies and Jews-and how they related to resistance. He recounts individual initiatives and organized action to aid fellow inmates, to escape, to revolt, to thwart management campaigns, and to mitigate the horrendous crimes.