As with all books about the Holocaust this is a harrowing read. Brasse was a Pole with an Austrian father and grandfather who refused to serve in the German army - he was expected to assimilate because of his 'Aryan' blood - and was sent to Auschwitz as a political prisoner. At first, his chances of survival didn't look good, but he managed a transfer to the kitchens and then was co-opted into a unit to produce photographs - identity ones of the prisoners and photos for the Germans to send home to their families. After a while, he was ordered to take photos for the 'doctors' such as Mengele, to document their horrible experiments.

He gradually made contact with the resistance within the camp and helped in various ways, sometimes just to ensure that people who needed it got food but at other times to produce false papers for people. Always he had misgivings and qualms about his enforced collaboration, though he resisted the pressure from his captors to be classified as a German and go to fight for Germany.

I do note that certain people mentioned in the book as being part of the resistance were not part of Primo Levi's first person account of his survival in another of the subcamps of Auschwitz. The present book doesn't really explain that the camp was huge, like a city, and there were lots of enclaves and areas where the prisoners were working for particular German firms, for example. So a particular individual who somehow manages to be married in the camp but later comes to grief was not universally known there for his heroism: things seem to have been more 'local' than comes across in this book.

I do have an issue regarding the information provided which shows the book was not based on interviews with Brasse himself, but on talking to his children and also taking information from a BBC documentary. So the assumptions about his feelings are actually second-hand. The other problem is that it mentions that some events have been switched around to fit the narrative. That means it's not possible to rely on this as a totally factual account, because as a reader I don't know what liberties have been taken with the timeline and why. For these reasons, I can only give this three stars. ( )

Wilhelm Brasse spent five years in Auschwitz and during those years he photographed over 50,000 prisoners. He was originally arrested and sent to the concentration camp for refusing to join the German army. While there he is put to work in the Identification Office where he takes photographs of all incoming prisoners for Nazi records. In time, as word of his talent travels the camp, he is required to take photos for camp officers. He is eventually summoned to take photos for camp doctors, including Dr. Joseph Mengle, and sees the atrocities his experiments actually were. Brasse saves thousands of photos when Auschwitz is liberated.

I had never heard of Wilhelm Brasse and was unaware that prisoners at Auschwitz were given positions such as photographers. I found the book interesting although there were some scenes that I felt were a little out of the norm for historical fiction. There were several descriptions of Mengle's "experiments" that I physically recoiled from. I do understand that these were events that happened but I felt they could have been handled differently. I also did not understand the abrupt ending to the story and do not understand why the authors would choose to end Wilhelm Brasse's story in such an odd way.
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