Review : Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:46:24 GMT

Autobiographical account by a German woman who was a prisoner in a Soviet labour camp and in a Nazi concentration camp..

First published in 1949, a new edition has recently been published by Pimlico.

I'd seen references to this book over the years but never got around to finding a copy to read. When I spotted in a bookshop window a couple of weeks ago, I said to myself "Ah I've been wanting to read that", so I bought it.

This it a remarkable story, told by a remarkable woman.

The author was born in Potsdam the capital of Prussia. She married the son of Martin Buber the Jewish philosopher by whom she had two daughters, they divorced and she became the partner of Heinz Neumann a prominent member of the German Communist Party. Margarete & Heinz fled to Russia when the Nazi's came to power in 1933. They became victims of one of Stalin's purges, Heinz was executed and Margarete was sent to a labour camp in Kazakhstan. Under the pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany Margarete was extradited back to Germany, soon after her arrival she was imprisoned in the Ravensbruck concentration camp for women until shortly before it was liberated by the Soviet Army.

I find it astonishing that Buber-Neumann was able to write this book so soon after her ordeal ended, and it is perhaps because she was able to do so that makes her book so compelling. It is a book whose every page bought tears to my eyes, they are there now.

The book was written in German, and translated into English soon after it was published in Germany. One of things I noticed was that there were "errors" in the translation. I got the impression that the translator did an initial scan translating pretty much word for word, then another to correct the grammar and get the right tense etc. Occasionally it seems that he missed this second scan and the text was published as per the first scan - are translated works edited, after they've been translated.

The differences in the manner in which the two totalitarian states treated there prisoners is stark. Nazi concentration camps were segregated in every which way - classes of prisoner (Jews, Deviants, Political, Jehovah's Witnesses etc) as well as sex and age. In the Soviet gulags everyone was thrown together in an environment of bizarre freedom. One is left with the feeling that the Nazi system was based on a perverse morality, whereas the Soviet system was based on a equally perverse immorality.

In conclusion if you're prepared to have your emotions stirred and conscience pricked this is a must read.

Urbane Tiger: Books

Review : Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler