Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps

An astonishing mosaic of acts of courage and moral strength, Langbein's moving, invaluable history is the fullest account to date of resistance to Nazi terror by prisoners within the concentration camps. Laying to rest the notion that Jews generally went to their deaths unresistingly or apathetically, he documents camp inmates' armed uprisings, widespread sabotage, escapes, organized underground resistance activities and spontaneous acts of defiance. Fighting against an all-powerful machinery of terror, prisoners shared bread, kept imperiled fellow inmates out of the clutches of the Nazi SS, killed stool pigeons and smuggled information to the outside world. Langbein, an Austrian veteran of the Spanish Civil War, spent four years in Nazi death camps and led the underground movement in Auschwitz. His myth-dispelling book systemically details the resistance activities of Germans, Poles, Austrians, Russians, French, Czechs, Gypsies and others. (May)