Verweigerte Rückkehr : Erfahrungen nach dem Judenmord

Memoirs of a Jew born in 1926 in Schmallenberg, near Dortmund. Many Schmallenbergers in official positions were in the SS; after the "Kristallnacht" pogrom, in which the synagogue was destroyed, they forced the family to "sell" them all its property. Frankenthal, his father, and his brother Ernst were sent to a nearby labor camp. In March 1943 the family was deported to Auschwitz. The parents were gassed; Hans and Ernst were sent to the Monowitz camp. Describes the brutality of the SS and of some of the IG Farben foremen, and acts of resistance (sabotage, smuggling out messages). The death march in winter 1945 brought the brothers to Mittelbau-Dora; from there they were sent to Theresienstadt, where they were liberated. They returned to Schmallenberg and resumed their father's cattle-trading business. The editors' postscript (pp. 175-188) describes the unwillingness of Germans today to face their past, traces the efforts of IG Farben and other employers of slave labor to evade the payment of compensation, and notes that Monowitz is practically ignored both in visits to Auschwitz and in memorialization elsewhere. Originalausg. 187 pages : illustrations ; 19 cm.