"there were firemen at the camp with very modern equipment" (p. 9). Amongst the things that he had not expected to find on arriving, in June 1944, "at a camp whose sinister reputation was known to the whole world thanks to the Allied radio broadcasts," one may note, for the detainees, "a hospital with sections specialised in line with the most modern hospital practices" (p. 4), "vast and well fitted-out wash houses along with communal W.C.'s built according to the modern principles of sanitary hygiene" (p. 10), "the micro-wave delousing process which had just been created" (p. 14), "the mechanical bakery" (p. 15) the legal aid for the detainees (pp. 16-17), the existence of "dietetic cooking" for some of the sick, with "special soups and even a special bread" (p. 26), "a library where numerous reference works, classic textbooks, and periodicals could be found" (p 27), the daily rolling by, next to the camp, of "the Krakow-Berlin express" (p. 29), a cinema, a cabaret, an orchestra (p. 31), etc. M. Klein also notes the horrible aspects of life in the camp and all the rumours, including the "horrific stories" of gassings which he seems not really to have believed until after the war, and then only thanks to the testimonies in the "various trials of war criminals" (p. 7).
