The Last Consolation Vanished

“The degradations of the death camps, and the prospect of his own imminent end, propel Zalmen Gradowski to an act of witness that rises now and then to Biblical heights of eloquence. To read this tragically riven collaborator in the Holocaust is to be shaken to the bone.” * J. M. Coetzee *
“Grad­ows­ki aston­ish­es with fresh insights that only a camp insid­er could pos­si­bly have… . [C]ogent, frank, and sen­si­tive—well worth a long pondering. In the book’s inci­sive after­word, Pro­fes­sor Arnold I. David­son con­cludes that Grad­ows­ki ​‘left us a writ­ten con­so­la­tion of courage, deter­mi­na­tion, and posthu­mous vic­to­ry. He was and remains a hero’. Indeed, until we learn from this Son­derkom­man­do mem­ber, none of us can think our­selves tru­ly knowl­edge­able about the Shoah.” – Arthur B. Shostak * Jewish Book Council *
“Drop whatever you are doing right now and go order the first complete English translation of his manuscripts, newly published as The Last Consolation Vanished. You may never be able to read another Holocaust-related book again.” – Dara Horn * Jewish Review of Books *
“[I am] so grateful to Zalmen Gradowski for his fortitude, courage, and vulnerability; for his ability to endure the truly unimaginable and still maintain distance enough not only to share that which he witnessed, but to do so in an incredibly thoughtful, lyrical, and haunting way… . Davidson provides a beautiful literary analysis of Gradowski’s work, including significant exploration of its deep rootedness in Jewish texts and traditions.” – Rabbi Rachel Maimin * Reform Jewish Quarterly *
“These two historically precise and shattering Yiddish-language testimonies by Zalmen Gradowski rank among the most important documents of the twentieth century. An outstanding translation by Monet, and two fine essays accompanied by a superb critical apparatus by editors Davidson and Mesnard bring these documents of murder and resistance to life like no edition before. The outcome is a major achievement in Holocaust historiography.” * Robert Jan van Pelt, author of ‘The Case for Auschwitz’ *

Zalmen Gradowski (1910–44) was a Jewish-Polish prisoner in Auschwitz-Birkenau and a member of the Sonderkommando who was murdered in Auschwitz.

Arnold I. Davidson is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he teaches principally in the Department of Jewish Thought and the Department of Romance Studies. He is also the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago.

Philippe Mesnard is professor of comparative literature in the Department of Literature at the Université Clermont Auvergne, France. He is also a member of the Institut Universitaire de France and editor of the journal Mémoires en jeu.

Rubye Monet is an English teacher and scholar, writer, and translator of Yiddish living in France.

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