Surviving the Camps
is an intriguing study of life in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Paul R. Bartrop responds to earlier scholarly evaluations with the theory that the formation of a prisoner social system based on cooperation and mutual aid served as a positive force that, to a substantial degree, countered the structure imposed on the prisoners by the Nazis. Bartrop concludes that only group solidarity could alleviate the problems of living in a social environment as extreme as the concentration camp. Analyzing the testimonial accounts of many concentration camp survivors,
will be an excellent source for academic historians, psychologists, and professors of Jewish and Holocaust studies.