Description: Written by a concentration camp survivor, Battlefield of Ideas draws upon personal experience and historical sources largely unknown to American scholars to provide an in-depth examination of life inside the camps and the survival tactics of Polish prisoners. Debski offers a new "battlefield" model for studying the camps that emphasizes the prisoners' actions against Nazi power and stands as a powerful critique of older explanatory models-put forth by prominent scholars such as Hannah Arendt and Lawrence Langer-that assume prisoners were unable to resist.
Reflecting the range of responses in the camps, up to and including resistance, Debski presents a typology of prisoners that represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the sociology of the camps. The book also includes detailed documentation on the structure of the camps and the daily routines of the prisoners' lives. A final chapter deals with the lives of the survivors after liberation, and the sometimes painful reintegration into society-and reintegration of their selves-that marked survivors ultimately as victors and not victims. Battlefield of Ideas is at once deeply personal and rigorously researched, a stirring testimony to the human instinct to persevere in the face of evil.

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