An important new book

Or rather, a book that has been around for a while and has just recently been translated into English: At the Edge of the Abyss: A Concentration Camp Diary, 1943-1944, by David Koker. Koker was a Dutch Jew who was arrested, along with other family members, in early 1943, and sent to a concentration camp in the southern Netherlands. He was eventually consigned to Dachau, but died in transit.

The book looks to be an excellent read; note the fine powers of observation as Koker gets a firsthand glimpse of Heinrich Himmler:

A slight, insignificant-looking little man, with a rather good-humored face. High peaked cap, mustache, and small spectacles. I think: If you wanted to trace back all the misery and horror to just one person, it would have to be him. Around him a lot of fellows with weary faces. Very big, heavily dressed men, they swerve along whichever way he turns, like a swarm of flies, changing places among themselves (they don’t stand still for a moment) and moving like a single whole. It makes a fatally alarming impression. They look everywhere without finding anything to focus on.

Edge of the Abyss is a valuable addition to Holocaust literature, and Jordan Michael Smith’s review is a good introduction to the mind and work of a man whose intellect remained free and active, even in the harshest surroundings imaginable.