Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, the Copenhagen Voice, 6 September 2010

“We Wept Without Tears”, a best-selling book containing interviews with the few surviving Jewish members of the Sonderkommando at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, is now available in a Danish version. Published by Introite! Publishers and released on 7 September, the book - “Vi græd uden tårer” - contains material not published before.

“We Wept Without Tears” comprises interviews with the few surviving Jewish members of the Sonderkommando.

The Sonderkommando consisted primarily of Jewish prisoners forced by the Nazi Germans to facilitate the mass extermination at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Though never involved in the actual killings, they were compelled to be the “members of the staff” of the Nazi death factory and deal with incoming prisoners, collect their clothes, jewelry and other belongings, remove hair and gold fillings, and remove their remains from crematoria.

Some of these men, who witnessed at first hand the unparalleled horror of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, had never spoken of their experiences before.

Over a period of years, the book’s author, Dr Gideon Greif, conducted intensive interviews with all the Sonderkommando survivors living in Israel. They described not only the specific technical details of the Nazi killing programme, but also the moral and human challenges they faced while fulfilling their appalling work.

The book provides direct testimony about the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem”, but it is also a unique document on the boundless cruelty and the deceit practised by the Nazi German regime on the victims.

“We Wept Without Tears” documents the helplessness and powerlessness of the 1.5 million people, 90% of them Jews, who were brutally murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The book also contains a 100-page historical and updated overview of the Sonderkommando and its role in the Nazi regime.

Already published in Israel, Germany, USA, UK and Poland, “We Wept Without Tears” was launched in a Danish version on 7 September with the title “Vi græd uden tårer”.

The 500-page hardback book contains five new and never before published drawings and plans of the crematoria by the architect Peter Siebers; 20 photos from the Auschwitz Album; some of the clandestine photos; and a foreword by the well-known Danish researcher Dr Therkel Stræde.

Dr Gideon Greif was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1951.

He is an Israeli historian who has primarily dedicated his research to the history of the Nazi German extermination camps.

For many years he worked for Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel, the principle institution in the world studying the history of the Holocaust. He was also an international research scholar at the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies at the University of Miami.

The author is now chief historian and researchers at the Shem Olam Institute in Israel, and senior historian and researcher at the Foundation for Holocaust Education Projects in Florida, USA.

Gideon Greif is the author of a lot of scientific articles and documentaries about Shoah (the Holocaust) for radio and television. Today he travels all around the world doing lectures for students and researchers.

“Vi græd uden tårer” was translated by Tom Havemann
. 500 pages. Hardback. Publisher: Introit. ISBN: 978-87-90820-42-8. Recommended retail price: 399.95 Dkr.

Click here and here to see a two-part interview by the Copenhagen Voice with Gideon Greif.