A remarkable story of survival for almost three hundred Jews wholive to recount the brutalities of a Nazi work camp. In 1972 the Hamburg State Court acquitted Walter Becker, theGerman chief of police in the Polish city of Starachowice, of warcrimes committed against Jews. Thirty years before, Becker had beenresponsible for liquidating the nearby Jewish ghetto, sendingnearly 4,000 Jews to their deaths at Treblinka and 1,600 toslave-labor factories. The shocking acquittal, delivered despitethe incriminating eyewitness testimony of survivors, drives thisauthor?s inquiry. Drawing on the rich testimony of survivors of the Starachowiceslave-labor camps, Christopher R. Browning examines the experiencesand survival strategies of the Jewish prisoners and the policiesand personnel of the Nazi guard. From the killings in the marketsquare in 1942 through the succession of brutal camp regimes, thereare stories of heroism, of corruption and retribution, of desperatechoices forced on husbands and wives, parents and children. In theend, the ties of family and neighbor are the sinews ofsurvival.