Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora | 
 enlarge | Authors: Pierre Berg, Brian Brock
Publisher: AMACOM
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $12.10
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Avg. Customer Rating:  79 reviews
Sales Rank: 226856
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0814412998
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5318092
EAN: 9780814412992
ASIN: 0814412998
Publication Date: September 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A searing, brutal account of a French teenager's survival in Auschwitz... And a major addition to Holocaust literature. Originally penned shortly after the war, when memories were still fresh, Scheisshaus Luck recounts Berg's constant struggle in the camps, escaping death countless times while enduring inhumane conditions, exhaustive labor, and near starvation. As we quickly approach the day when there will be no living witnesses to the Nazi's "Final Solution," Berg's memoir stands as a searing reminder of how the Holocaust affects us all.
Book Description
In 1943, eighteen year old Pierre Berg picked the wrong time to visit a friend’s house—at the same time as the Gestapo. He was thrown into the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. But through a mixture of savvy and chance, he managed to survive...and ultimately got out alive. “As far as I’m concerned,” says Berg, “it was all shithouse luck, which is to say—inelegantly—that I kept landing on the right side of the randomness of life.” Such begins the first memoir of a French gentile Holocaust survivor published in the U.S. Originally penned shortly after the war when memories were still fresh, Scheisshaus Luck recounts Berg’s constant struggle in the camps, escaping death countless times while enduring inhumane conditions, exhaustive labor, and near starvation. The book takes readers through Berg’s time in Auschwitz, his hair’s breadth avoidance of Allied bombing raids, his harrowing “death march” out of Auschwitz to Dora, a slave labor camp (only to be placed in another forced labor camp manufacturing the Nazis’ V1 & V2 rockets), and his eventual daring escape in the middle of a pitched battle between Nazi and Red Army forces. Utterly frank and tinged with irony, irreverence, and gallows humor, Scheisshaus Luck ranks in importance among the work of fellow survivors Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. As we quickly approach the day when there will be no living eyewitnesses to the Nazi's “Final Solution,” Berg's memoir stands as a searing reminder of how the Holocaust affected us all.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 74 more reviews...
 One of the best books I have read on the Holocaust . . . December 2, 2008
I received this book as a advance copy and simply couldn't put it down. I have read many books on the Holocaust and the concentration camp experience and have tried to be varied about the accounts I have read. I have yet to read an account with a voice like Mr. Berg's. The way the story it told is conversational and true to the age of the protagonist. Mr. Berg's account is unflinching without being preachy, focusing on the what instead of the why. How could one person explain the horror and inhumanity of the concentration camps or the hows and whys of survival? While this book didn't spare the reader the horrors Mr. Berg faced, it also didn't try to explain them away in philosophy or sociology. This book also was unique because it was written by a "red triangle", the camp deliniation for a political prisoner. Accounts by politicals, particularly ones that aren't manifestos or sociological studies, are rare and give a different view of the prison experience. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in European history or the Holocaust.
Auschwitz In All Its Horror November 26, 2008
It's quite remarkable to consider that some people actually don't believe the Holocaust happened. With the incredible huge amount of evidence that proves the Holocaust did happen, it's hard to imagine that someone might think otherwise.
One segment of the countless published accounts regarding the mass extermination of people from various cultures and ethnic backgrounds is usually missing: the personal stories as written by the people who lived through them and actually survived Auschwitz.
Pierre Berg's story of the time spent in Auschwitz is even more important because it was written not long after the events transpired. With supreme clarity, Berg brings all the fear, death, and starvation to a reality for all of us to appreciate.
It's very difficult for one to draw a picture around 6 million innocent people killed during the Holocaust. However, with Berg's help, the reader can construct a vivid picture of the Holocaust. Multiply that by 6 million and one can finally feel the magnitude of those truly tragic years.
 What I got to read, I enjoyed November 21, 2008
Unfortunately, I lost this book before finishing it. So I can only comment on what I was able to read.
I'll state up front that I believe almost all Holocaust memoirs should be read, and this one is no exception. There's very few memoirs out there by non-Jews and thus, makes this one extremely important. Although, if Berg had analyzed what made his experience different from the Jews in the camp it would be a much more important book.
Berg seems to agree with Primo Livi that surviving was just by mere chance. But, perhaps unconsciously, he also seems to show that keeping one's humanity is critical to not succumbing to the myriad of ways one can die in Auschwitz, just like Livi put forward in one of his books.
I didn't find the crude language all that upsetting. The things Berg saw were horrible, and sometimes there's not a nice way to describe certain events or ideas. One must also remember that the original version was a diary and thus, Berg's intimate thoughts.
I'll definitely purchase the book so I can fully read the book again.
 I Recomend This Novel November 13, 2008
Pierre Berg's autobiographical novel is the account of an eighteen year old concentration camp inmate. Pierre was arrested as a political prisoner for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In 1943 he picked the wrong time to visit his friend's house and was detained by the Gestapo. Berg's constant struggles, countless escapes from death, exhaustive labor, near starvation, and his endurance of inhumane conditions keep the reader fearfuly engrossed in his story. I recommend this novel, though graphic at times, as a frank account of a horrible event in Mr. Berg's life.
Heartbreaking story of human survival November 2, 2008
I've never really read a biography of someone who has been on the inside of a concentration camp.
The book is so graphically detailed, that this is not for the faint of heart.
One of the chilling things about the book is that the author need to relive many of the details of this horror story to provide them to te writer.
Since the author spoke 3 languages and had some tradesman skills, it improved his chances for survival.
Without those skills, I dread to think about how quickly his demise might have happened.
This is a story of true human spirit and survival.
It's absolutely amazing at what this person overcame to simply remain alive.
I recommend the book as a story of human triiumph but intense sadness.
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