I Survived Auschwitz, by Krystyna Zywulska

I got this book while visiting the camps as well as the one reviewed earlier (By Bread Alone). The account is tremendously different for very important reasons. 1) It's a different person. Obviously. But 2) The subject is a woman, and 3) She was not a Jew--as far as I could tell. It was difficult to understand this point exactly. She was labeled in the camp as a political prisoner from Poland, and she was treated as such--not an immediate target for execution as the Jews were, yet references I find online suggest she somehow masked her true identity. I think it may go beyond my knowledge of Jewish and Polish names, because it was very clear that she kept her real name a secret, which perhaps has Jewish origins.

 Most Holocaust accounts I've read are written by Jewish men, so the perspective of a political prisoner (whether she was Jewish or not is irrelevant, because she was treated as a political prisoner) and a woman who works registering those next in line to die, is fascinating for this completely different perspective. It goes to show that even if their suffering was "logically" less, it's still far too immense to imagine. Another good read.