This is an unusual book in many respects: part diary, part biography, part memoir, and as much art as history. The editors are art historians rather than Holocaust historians and the subject/author, Arnold Daghani, was a relatively known artist with a massive collection of Holocaust-related drawings, some of which are in the book. It's novel to look at the Holocaust from this perspective, and to read about his postwar efforts to keep the memory of the Mikhailowka Camp alive and obtain justice for its victims.

Prior to reading this book I had heard of places like Mikhailowka but knew almost nothing about them. Indeed they are an unjustly neglected topic in Holocaust literature. The Mikhailowka was one of several camps across Ukraine where private German companies contracted Jewish slave laborers to perform construction projects, under the eye of the SS. I guess "forced-labor camp" doesn't have the same ring as "concentration camp" or "death camp" and people assume the inmates of places like Mikhailowka didn't have it too bad. And indeed it was possible to live in such places. They were places of work, not deliberate murder -- that is, there were no gas chambers, no crematorium facilities. Husbands and wives could be together, mothers and children -- there were even a few babies at Mikhailowka. But make no mistake, conditions were brutal, there were frequent arbitrary executions, and in the long run the survival rate was no better there than elsewhere. The only reason Arnold Daghani and his wife survived the war was because they escaped from camp in mid-1943. Late that year the entire population of Mikhailowka was shot to death and dumped in a mass grave. The editors note that of about 4,000 Romanian Jews conscripted to work for Mikhailowka-type projects, only about 150 survived the war.

The first half of the book is Daghani's diary, which kept in English shorthand in the camp and expanded on after his escape. The second half analyzes his art and his later life, which is of less interest to me but would be of great interest to art historians. This is an excellent source on forced labor camps -- it's a pity that it also seems to be the only one. ( )