"The most notorious prison installation in the Nazi network, Auschwitz, was liberated by Red Army troops on January 27, 1945. They found a vast complex with only a few emaciated survivors, 60,000 others having been marched west by the Germans just before their arrival. In the camp the Soviet troops found evidence of unspeakable, factory-type murder, including warehouses of human hair, civilian clothing, and gold tooth-fillings. Ever since, the true story of Auschwitz has been left to the camp's survivors to tell, though these have been few. This book is the remarkable memoir of a Red Army soldier who was imprisoned at Auschwitz, undergoing the daily brutality of the camp as it assumed its sinister shape in the countryside of Poland, yet who escaped the horrors to fully recount his experience. Andrei Pogozhev had been hastily mustered into the Red Army in order to stand before Moscow to resist the German onslaught in 1941. In a confused action, his unit was surrounded by the enemy and forced into captivity. Withstanding harsh treatment and near-starvation, he and other Soviet prisoners finally found themselves in the vast camp marked by the entrance sign, 'Arbeit Macht Frei' ... This recollection of Auschwitz, with its vast detail on prisoners and guards alike, is as vivid an account of the internal workings of the death-camp as we are likely to see from the diminishing number of people who survived" -- From the publisher.

Includes index. Originally published with Pavel Stenʹkin's account "Meni︠a︡ ne slomili!" in Pobeg iz Osvent︠s︡ima (2005).

Entrapment -- Stalag 308 -- Auschwitz -- Extermination -- Birkenau -- Hospital -- Gallows -- Sonderkommandos -- Escape -- Interrogation.