A unique and haunting first-person Holocaust account by Zalmen Gradowski, a Sonderkommando prisoner killed in Auschwitz.

On October 7, 1944, a group of Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz obtained explosives and rebelled against their Nazi murderers. It was a desperate uprising that was defeated by the end of the day. More than four hundred prisoners were killed. Filling a gap in history, The Last Consolation Vanished is the first complete English translation and critical edition of one prisoner’s powerful account of life and death in Auschwitz, written in Yiddish and buried in the ashes near Crematorium III.
 
Zalmen Gradowski was in the Sonderkommando (special squad) at Auschwitz, a Jewish prisoner given the unthinkable task of ushering Jewish deportees into the gas chambers, removing their bodies, salvaging any valuables, transporting their corpses to the crematoria, and destroying all evidence of their murders. Sonderkommandos were forcibly recruited by SS soldiers; when they discovered the horror of their assignment, some of them committed suicide or tried to induce the SS to kill them. Despite their impossible situation, many Sonderkommandos chose to resist in two interlaced ways: planning an uprising and testifying. Gradowski did both, by helping to lead a rebellion and by documenting his experiences. Within 120 scrawled notebook pages, his accounts describe the process of the Holocaust, the relentless brutality of the Nazi regime, the assassination of Czech Jews, the relationships among the community of men forced to assist in this nightmare, and the unbearable separation and death of entire families, including his own. Amid daily unimaginable atrocities, he somehow wrote pages that were literary, sometimes even lyrical—hidden where and when one would least expect to find them.
 
The October 7th rebellion was completely crushed and Gradowski was killed in the process, but his testimony lives on. His extraordinary and moving account, accompanied by a foreword and afterword by Philippe Mesnard and Arnold I. Davidson, is a voice speaking to us from the past on behalf of millions who were silenced. Their story must be shared.

The Catholic University of America Press is honored to publish the English Critical Edition of the Works of Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II. Under the auspices of an international editorial board, the English Critical Edition will comprise more than 20 volumes, covering all of John Paul’s writings and correspondence in the years before and during his papacy. This collection is essential for several reasons. For one thing, gaining access to the saint’s writings has posed a significant challenge. Except for official papal addresses and documents preserved and disseminated by the Vatican, St. John Paul’s works have been scattered and limited. Many documents need a new translation. Finally, English-language audiences have faced the challenge, even in the case of published texts of dealing with several languages, various translations, and textual idiosyncrasies. The second volume of the series presents Wojtyła’s lectures at the Catholic University of Lublin and his works on Max Scheler. This volume consists of three parts: Karol Wojtyła’s lectures at the Lublin University from 1954 to 1957 (during three academic years); Wojtyła’s articles related to the ethical issues discussed in the Lublin lectures, and his habilitation thesis on Max Scheler from 1953 with other essays related more closely to Scheler’s thought. As was the case with Volume 1, Volume 2 also relies on the original manuscripts and typescripts of Wojtyła’s works. These original texts were compared with the Polish published editions, and the significant differences between them were marked in the scholarly apparatus. Some of the essays in this volume were never published in English, others were never published before.