Malyshev Mikhail
The concentration camp represents the extreme form of totalitarian state’s total domination over a man. The aim of the article is to show dehumanization of a human being based on the Holocaust victims’ testimonies complemented by the stories of Gulag prisoners. The author primarily takes into consideration the memoirs of those witnesses that try to avoid unnecessary illusions, which conceal the truth and lead to the idealization of a human being. Relying on the testimony of Zalmen Gradovsky, the author tries to overcome shallow judgments about the members of Zondercommands that told us the harsh truth about the courageous behavior of the innocent victims sentenced to death in the gas chambers.
Keywords: witness, genocide, dehumanization of a human being, Oswiecim, “The Grey Zone”, Zondercommand.