Uniquely, such towering figures of the Auschwitz hierarchy were recruited from among those who, back home, had stood on the bottom rungs of Jewish society. Those who’d made nothing of themselves—schnorrers, nebbishes, schlemiels, freeloaders, rogues, swindlers, idlers, slackers—all blossomed in this swamp. At the same time—and this was the case with breathtaking regularity—those who back home had made respectable bourgeois careers for themselves, including industrialists, lawyers, wholesalers, and company executives, and those who’d inherited pews in houses of worship, here proved to be the
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