Amazon.com Price: $19.95
Being stationed overseas for 6 years has allowed us to do a TON of traveling but it's not always easy to locate concentration camps. This book makes getting from one to another a snap.
--Vicki Landes, author of "Europe For The Senses - A Photographic Journal"
I purchased this guide prior to a trip to Poland, wherein I intended to visit at least two camps - Auschwitz and Majdanek, as well as the ghettos of Krakow and Warsaw. As it turned out, we only got to Auschwitz, and there isn't much left of the Warsaw ghetto to see, as it was bulldozed by the Nazis. So, unfortunately, the book ended up doing me little good - but through no fault of the author.
Terrance has obviously traveled to and around the sites quite a bit, as is shown by his attention to obscure details. Travel directions are detailed, and the presence of important travel tips such as when trains run or don't run, distances, etc., is very helpful.
However, Terrance's sometimes-stilted prose, sloppy copyediting, and whimsical use of capital letters (he has a tendency to capitalize the first Letters of his Nouns, such that one feels like one is reading a Revolutionary War-era book) can be quite distracting. In fact, this is the main reason I've given the book only 3 stars. If decimal ratings were possible, it would probably rank a 3.5.
With all due respect to Mr. Marc Terrance for his work done on this book, I must rate his investigation homework as insufficient and partial, thus only one star.
The reason is that he managed to omit one of the first, most inhumane and sadistic camps of WW2 in Europe, a place called 'JASENOVAC' in Croatia.
This is the place where an estimated one million civilians (majority women and children) were brutaly tortured and murdered just for being non-Nazi and non-Croatian.
This was a legacy of the Nazi-puppet State created in 1941, called 'Independent State of Croatia' governed by the so called Ustashe, dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism.
This rampage of racial GENOCIDE began in August 1941 and lasted 'till April 1945, when the camp was liberated.
More than 60 years later the existance of this infamous camp and the horrifying crimes committed there are still being overlooked, denied and suppressed throughout the world.
Hopefully, not for long.
For more info, please see:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-9841842-1853711?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Jasenovac
http://www.jasenovac.org
http://www.pavelicpapers.com/
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/jasenovac/
http://www.balkan-archive.org.yu/kosta/jasenovac/
Again, 60 years later, the same Nationalistic Party called NDH (a.k.a Independent State of Croatia) comes to power in Croatia and reignites the old genocidal aspirations which were an overture to the 1990's conflict in the Balkans.
The roots of the 1990's war in the Balkans lie in 'Jasenovac' Death Camp.
So, Mr. Terrance, I am sure you'd agree that Jasenovac belongs in your book.
Never Again !
Lest we forget, JASENOVAC !
Regards,
Mr. Damjan Dosen
