The Human Race: Preceded by an Homage to Robert Antelme by Edgar Morin

by Robert Antelme

Book Overview

Arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Dachau, Robert Antelme recovered his freedom a year later when Fran ois Mitterand, visiting the camp in an official capacity, recognized the dying Antelme and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0910395780
• ISBN13: 9780910395786
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Marlboro Press
• Length: 298 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Humanity is not enough

"Weg! -get the hell out of the way! -he said to me in a rasping voice. I shrugged it off ... but I still existed, and I shrugged it off ... the insults of these people are no more able to reach us than they are able to get their hands on the nightmare we have become in their brains: for all their denying of us we are still there." (p. 51) These victimizers could live next to you, could walk by you any given day on the streets, they are not German, they are human of any nationality, in this case Spanish: "Sometimes the SS man laughs and jokes with the doctor. And yet, before he was given the job, the SS used to beat him. But now he wears a white coat; he sleeps in a small heated room; he doesn't have to go to roll call; and he eats, and he's pink ... the Spanish doctor rapidly turned into a particularly good example of the kommando's aristocracy." It makes one ashamed to be Spanish, human. And there's no such thing as sin, they say. It's a hard read because of its sadness, hellish misery, absence of what well-intentioned people call humanity but is nothing but sin and evil. The author cries his soul out, pours his deepest self in words of sorrow, in pages that seek comprehension, but from whom? The author does not say. If its from his readers no help can be given him now. This is the best account of the experiences of a man in a nazi prison camp during the European Holocaust. Buch better than the popular Primo Levi book. This is a deep, slow-paced, intellectual, thinking-man's guide to survival in Holocaust Europe. There are detailed descriptions of ways of feeling, of sentiments and relationships that are tacit, hard to describe, but which the author in his characteristic French style achieves perfectly. I strongly recommend to read this book, with a little patience. It takes its time to get into it fully, to grasp the implications and all the meaning of what's going on physically -but specially- psychologically. The book is not spiritual, because there's no spiritual faith. But if humanity is not enough to account for the gravity of the things told here, then who or what to appeal to? If we trust in man alone, and man does these things, then who are we to appeal to? It would be an useless exercise of intellect.

extraordinary account of life in a concentration camp

This is the best and most moving account I've ever read of life in a concentration camp, better by far than Primo Levi, better even than Viktor Frankl, and better even than One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, all of which are saying a lot. The book pulled me into the daily life in a way I've not encountered so strongly before. Antelme has a gift for providing details that immerse the reader in the experience, and he has a novelist's skill with characterization. This is a powerful, meaningful work.