Night of the Mist

When the Germans invaded Hungary in 1944, Eugene Heimler was twenty-one. His father, a socialist as well as a Jew, was arrested by the Gestapo and never seen again. Mr. Heimler and his new wife were taken from a Hungarian ghetto and deported in a cattle truck to Auschwitz. His wife and family died there, but he survived to be taken to Buchenwald and other camps in Germany. At the end of the European war, he escaped and found his way back to his native country. NIGHT OF THE MIST is an account of a young man’s experience under the Gestapo. It records the day-to-day events, the miserable conditions of existence, the physical suffering endured by the prisoners. But Eugene Heimler goes beyond a factual record of events. With a gifted insight he describes the deeper effects of suffering – on their minds. He writes not only of himself but of many others imprisoned with him: of the doctor and the architect, no longer middle-class gentlemen of authority, but near animals; of the girl, once gentle and intelligent, now offering her diseased body for a crust of bread; of the man who spent twelve years in prison for the murder of his wife, and who in the inferno of a concentration camp found meaning in life.Yet, though he knew the worst of humanity, Heimler was able to regain his faith in God and in the dignity of man. He does not hate; and the horror of his experience is transcended by his compassion and deep understanding of spiritual values. The true message of his book is not one of horror, but of hope.