Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death (Allen Lane)

Otto Dov Kulka, Rosenbloom Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was an 11-year-old boy sent to Auschwitz, in September 1943. His father, he writes (p13), had been in concentration camps since 1939, ending in Auschwitz a year before Otto. He miraculously found his son, knowing he would be sent to Auschwitz with the remaining Theresienstadt survivors, to await their destruction there.

Kulka's slim book of only 127 pages describes his personal experiences of the horrors of the 'Final Solution' we are only too familiar with. Wikipedia, for example, lists 60 pages of personal accounts of the Holocaust. Kulka's is illustrated with 48 chilling scenes of what remains of the site, its relics of personal property, plus other places and personalities significant to Jews. He is forced with the other prisoners to witness the public execution of four escaped and recaptured Russian prisoners (p45) with their final words, "'Za Stalina!' 'Za rodinu!'" ["For Stalin! For the homeland!"]

It should not surprise us that such images have haunted Kulka for many decades, and led to dreams similar to flashbacks suffered by others either tortured or forced to submit to witness such atrocities. Chapter 6 (p51) is titled, 'Three Poems from the Brink of the Gas Chambers.' As Kulka's subtitle tells us, he reflects on the Small Death and the Great Death. But worst of all, Kulka writes on page 26, .."Schiller's 'Ode to Joy' from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, was being played opposite the crematoria of Auschwitz, a few hundred metres from the place of
execution..." On the next page Kulka remembers..."and we are singing like little angels, our voices providing an accompaniment to the procession of the people in black who are slowly swallowed up into the crematoria."

Let me end with British historian Sir Ian Kershaw's tribute to Professor Kulka on the back cover of this book:
"This is one of the most remarkable testimonies to inhumanity that I know. The deeply moving recollections of Dov Kulka's boyhood years in Auschwitz, interwoven with reflections of elegaic, poetic quality, vividly convey the horror of the death-camp, the trauma of family and friends, and the indelible imprint left on the memory of a young boy who became a distinguished historian of the Holocaust. An extraordinarily important work which needs to be read."