The Cap: Or The Price Of A Life Book

Roman Frister was born into a wealthy and cultured Polish-Jewish family in the 1920s and, for a while, life was beautiful. Then war broke out and, in no time at all, Frister's boyhood was at an end. His mother was beaten to death before his eyes in an interrogation room. His father died of tuberculosis in Starochowice concentration camp and then he himself was sent to Auschwitz .The worst was yet to come. One night in the camp, Frister was raped by a fellow prisoner, who then stole his cap in an effort to silence him. Anyone lining up for morning roll-call without his cap was immediately taken off by the SS and shot. And so, to survive, Frister stole the cap of another prisoner--who was then shot dead in his place. Frister's self-portrait is utterly unsparing. He is, in his own words, like all camp survivors, "spiritually damaged" and can never be repaired. Der Spiegel has already hailed The Cap as the Holocaust book of the decade, and that is no exaggeration. --Christopher HartRead More