process and not a phenomenon that happened overnight. In January 1940, the gas chambers were not in existence yet, and no one at the time even imagined the direction the plan for the "final solution to the Jewish question" would take.
The picture of the various groups of prisoners in the book is highly simplistic, and the author uses well-established, sometimes very pernicious stereotypes in describing them. This is how, for example, he portrays the Jews as entirely passive in the face of the Holocaust, incapable of undertaking any self-defence themselves. An extreme example of the construction of such an image is the utterly untrue story of the revolt of the Sonderkommando members in KL Auschwitz presented in the book. The reader learns from it, among other things, that it was an initiative of the Poles, members of the off-camp conspiracy, developed as early as January 1940, which is an absurd claim from a historical point of view.
In presenting a vision of history that the revolt of the members of the Sonderkommando was, from the beginning, the idea of the Polish underground - which not only devised the plan for the uprising and equipped the prisoners with weapons but also conducted training in shooting and throat-cutting at the camp - the author, firstly, negates the existence of a Jewish underground organisation at Auschwitz and, secondly, deprives the Jews of one of the most heroic pages in the history of their self-defence and devalues the heroic initiative of the Sonderkommando members in fighting not only for their lives but also to halt or at least slow down the Holocaust taking place at Auschwitz.
It should be noted at this point that Matthews appears to have no knowledge or understanding of who the Sonderkommando members were and their situation in the camp. He states that "the club [puff - note W.W.-. M.] was to be used by the kapos [...] who maintained discipline by beating their fellow prisoners, and the dirty pigs from the Sonderkommando who worked in the gas chambers and crematoria" (he goes on to refer to these two groups collectively as "scum"), and in the following passage emphasises that "it was open to anyone who played a role in the smooth running of the camp, provided they were not Jewish" (p. 155). In many other passages, he mentions Kapo and Sonderkommando members in the same breath, supposedly equating the two categories of prisoners. In reality, when mass extermination was already being carried out in the camp gas chambers, the Sonderkommando consisted almost exclusively of Jews, forcibly recruited from among the new arrivals. These men, as eyewitnesses to the mass murders and crimes of the SS, were strictly isolated from the other camp prisoners. Thus, they were supposedly subject to a double ban on using the camp puff - firstly, as Jews and secondly, as so-called Geheimnisträger (bearers of the secret). The book's portrayal of their gruesome story, its extreme simplification of their dramatic choices and dilemmas, and its repeated likening of their role to the camp kapos are misleading and downright insulting to the camp victims.
Based on incomplete knowledge, total ignorance and a profound misunderstanding of the realities of war and the camps, the author easily, albeit without deep reflection, makes arbitrary assessments of the behaviour of various social groups caught up in the reality of the time, and these assessments are implied or even expressed explicitly as the only valid assessments. In doing so, Matthews abandons his role as a mere author of literary fiction and places himself as a moralist claiming the right to judge the attitudes of people caught up in war. After reading the book, the reader is left with the simple explanations given by the author: the Sonderkommando members participated in the crimes committed by the SS to save or at least prolong their lives. Individuals who were inherently selfish and ready to fight ruthlessly for their lives, even at the expense of their fellow prisoners, were elevated to the function of kapo. They could already be recognised when the transport arrived at the ramp. In contrast, the behaviour of the camp SS staff was due to their innate tendencies towards brutality. They were emotionally unstable, empathy-less psychopaths, ready to murder in cold blood at every opportunity, degenerates for whom the camp provided an opportunity to unleash their aggression and frustration with impunity and without limitation. Of course, a component of such a simplistic picture of the SS is the pleasure of carrying out random murders and obtaining sexual gratification through the torture of prisoners, as well as widespread rape on an almost daily basis. The book does not lack the plot of the good SS man, currently in vogue in such literature, where the tragic end evokes sympathy in the reader.
The book portrays women in a sexist and offensive way. The author treats them solely as sexual objects. Almost all of them are alluring and entice men with their charms and treat sexual contact instrumentally as a tool to achieve their ends. Even the heroine, a member of a Polish partisan unit, a 'true beauty', is, in fact, only the commander's mistress. Although she "hid her long blonde hair under a cap" (p. 160), wears men's clothes and carries a machine gun (p. 147), "the only action she has seen so far has been in the bedroom" (p. 249).
A reader familiar with the realities of the war and the attitude of Polish society towards the occupying forces may be astonished to learn that a Polish woman arrested by the Germans, upon learning that she is to work in the camp puff, declares to her friends: "My husband was a miserable, drunken jerk. The Germans shot him, and I don't regret it at all. [...] At least I'll have some sex, and let me tell you, I'm hoping for something better than what I'm used to. And hopefully, it will last a little longer" (p. 167). Romances between Polish women and German soldiers were also depicted unbelievably. The author states explicitly that during the occupation, the seduction of Germans by Polish women was a common phenomenon, to which the occupation authorities gave their full consent, and that "sexual activity between Germans and Polish women began to be considered not only acceptable but also necessary - it was, in fact, a kind of commercial transaction" (p. 75). This view is confirmed by the character of Tina, the mistress of Fischer, commander of the fictitious sub-camp in Wiśnica - a Polish woman whose affair with a German officer is supposed to ensure her safety and prosperous life during the war. In doing so, she enjoys amazing, unrealistic privileges - when she visits her family for a few days, the commandant provides her with a car and personal chauffeur. Tina attends official meetings (even though the commandant has a German wife) with top German officials, including Adolf Eichmann and Reinhard Heydrich. She also indulges in reproaches and quarrels, forbids Fischer to have contact with other women, and, when she catches him cheating, throws him out of the bedroom (in his house), resulting in the commandant spending the night on the sofa in his study (p. 265). It is difficult to acknowledge that a relationship would have been possible during the occupation where a Polish woman "threw her weight around" in the home of an SS officer, humiliating and forcing him to submit to her will.