The Saboteur of Auschwitz

The Saboteur of Auschwitz: The inspiring true story of a British soldier held prisoner in Auschwitz by Colin Rushton

Paperback, 288 pages

Published 1st October 2019 by Summersdale Publishers

Shelves:  historical, memoirs-biographies-etc, non-fiction, read, read-in-2020, ww2

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Description via Goodreads:

In 1942, young British soldier Arthur Dodd was taken prisoner by the German Army and transported to Oswiecim in Polish Upper Silesia. The Germans gave it another name, now synonymous with mankind’s darkest hours. They called it Auschwitz. 

Forced to do hard labour, starved and savagely beaten, Arthur thought his life would end in Auschwitz. Determined to go down fighting, he sabotaged Nazi industrial work, risked his life to alleviate the suffering of the Jewish prisoners and aided a partisan group planning a mass break-out. 

This shocking true story sheds new light on the operations at the camp, exposes a hierarchy of prisoner treatment by the SS and presents the largely unknown story of the military POWs held there.

I love both reading and educating myself about the Holocaust, in particular, about Auschwitz-Birkenau and most often I've found that, understandably, most memoirs regarding the camp are written by Jewish and Polish prisoners. Of course, there were several categories of prisoners held at the camp and it was very interesting to read this memoir from a different perspective. 

The Saboteur of Auschwitz tells us the story of Arthur Dodd, a British prisoner of war. It is very fascinating to see this different side of the camp and to read more about the treatment of British prisoners. Dodd certainly lives up to the title of this book as we hear about his experience, most notably telling us how he mainly worked to sabotage the forced work that he had to do in the camp. There is also good explanations of day-to-day activities of the camp as well as some portrayal of the remarkable effect that seeing other prisoners in the camp had on Dodd. 

There is no doubt that Dodd made a huge effort to fight his hardest in such restricted and dangerous circumstances and he is certainly an inspiring man, but for me this book was unfortunately not as personal as I would have liked it to have been. The book is mainly fact based which is certainly a positive as it allows us to learn but, as a memoir, I would have loved to have been able to connect more to Dodd emotionally and to have known more about him as an individual - this  would have significantly increased my interest and enjoyment of this book.

There is a section consisting of letters in the latter part of the book which satisfied my need for a more emotional connection to people who had similar experiences and I found this to be the most interesting, compelling section to read. Though it was significantly more distressing than the rest of the book, the letters simply felt a lot more personal than the author's writing. 

Overall, it was an enlightening and interesting opportunity to read about the experience of a British POW based in Auschwitz and I am very glad to have widened my knowledge by reading this book. I am privileged to get to know the story of Arthur Dodd and finished the book feeling both gratitude and awe. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to broaden their knowledge of this period of history.