By the spring of 1945 the Second World War was drawing to a close in Europe. Allied troops
were sweeping through Nazi Germany and discovering the atrocities of SS concentration camps.
The first to be reached intact was Buchenwald in central Germany. American soldiers struggled
to make sense of the shocking scenes they witnessed inside. They asked a small group of former
inmates to draft a report on the camp. It was led by Eugen Kogon a German political prisoner
who had been an inmate since 1939. The Theory and Practice of Hell is his classic account of
life inside. Unlike many other books by survivors who published immediately after the war The
Theory and Practice of Hell is more than a personal account. It is a horrific examination of
life and death inside a Nazi concentration camp a brutal world of a state within state and a
society without law. But Kogon maintains a dispassionate and critical perspective. He tries to
understand how the camp works to uncover its structure and social organization. He knew that
the book would shock some readers and provide others with gruesome fascination. But he firmly
believed that he had to show the camp in honest unflinching detail. The result is a unique
historical document-a complete picture of the society morality and politics that fueled the
systematic torture of six million human beings. For many years The Theory and Practice of Hell
remained the seminal work on the concentration camps particularly in Germany. Reissued with an
introduction by Nikolaus Waschmann a leading Holocaust scholar and author of Hilter's Prisons
this important work now demands to be re-read.
