The Auschwitz Album; A Book Based Upon an Album Discovered by a Concentration Camp Survivor, Lili Meier

New York: Random House, 1981. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing--based on Random House practice. Hardcover. Good/Fair. David Rubinger (Jacket photograph). xxxiii, [1], 167, [7] pages. Format is approximately 11.25 inches by 9 inches. Illustrations. DJ worn, torn, and chipped. Several blank back pages are creased. Many scholars of the Holocaust have come to believe that when a Holocaust survivor tells a story that sounds too incredible to be true, it may be just that: the truth. Such is the story of Lili Zelmanovic (Lili Jacob Meier) and her photo album. 18-year-old Lili Jacob was deported with her family, and most of the Jews of Hungary, in the spring of 1944. She was lucky and survived. She was granted a small miracle. On the day of her liberation, she found in the deserted SS barracks a photo album. It contained, among others, pictures of her family and friends as they arrived on the ramp and unknowingly awaited their death. It is the only photographic evidence of Jews arriving in Auschwitz or any other death camp. After the war, Lili found and married Max Zelmanovic, a prewar acquaintance. The album continued to be central to their lives. Survivors spread the word of a unique album in the possession of a waitress in Miami, and they made their way across the country to seek her out. Not a week would go by but Lili would bring home strangers who were not strangers, and they would pour over the pictures and weep. Rarely, someone would identify a family member, and Lili would give them the snapshot. Most of the photos remained unclaimed. In 1980 Serge Klarsfeld convinced Lilly that the album should be safeguarded at Yad Vashem. She came to Jerusalem and donated it to Yad Vashem, where it resides to this day and is treasured for the future. Because of its content as well as its history, the publication of this book is an extraordinary event: in April 1944 a young woman named Lili Jacob (now Lili Jacob Meier) was deported with her family from Bilke, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, to Hungary. With the other Jews of Bilke, the Jacobs were sent by the Nazis first to a ghetto in the nearby town of Berehovo and, a short time later, to Auschwitz and its death camp, Birkenau. Everyone in Lili's family was slaughtered. One she survived, after being subjected to bestial treatment. Eventually Lili was sent to Dora, a Nazi slave camp four hundred miles to the west, and it was there that she and other inmates of the prison were liberated by the Americans. On that day, gravely ill, Lili fell asleep in a newly vacated German barracks. When she awakened, she searched for warm clothing and found, under a pajama top, a photograph album. She opened it and, on the very first page, saw the picture of Naftali Svi Weiss, the distinguished rabbi of Bilke. Turning the pages, LIli found, in the neatly positioned photographs, the images of the doomed Jews of Auschwitz--among them members of her own family. Now, years later, these photographs, most of which have never been published before, are made available to the general public in what is one of the century's most powerful and unique historical records. Harrowing, eerie, immensely poignant, these pictures of the German death factory and of the pained and bewildered faces of people "selected" for either slave labor or the gas chamber form what has been called "a holy document". Peter Hellman is a New York-based journalist and best-selling author. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Times, New York Sun and others. Books include bestselling Chief!: Classic Cases from the Files of the Chief of Detectives, The Auschwitz Album, and When Courage Was Stronger than Fear. Magazine journalism highlights include the first major profile in the American press of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld and their search for justice for Nazi victims in France.