By Barbara Boehringer This book contains the fascinating and exciting story of one of many of Hitler's political opponents. It is a stark reminder of what total dictatorship can do - a system in which the prisoners became Hitler's unwilling executers. The author, tattooed with the prisoner's number 104338, wrote down his memoirs while he was in custody after WW 2. He had been accused of his function as concentration camp elder but had been acquitted according to testimonies from fellow prisoners. He describes with astonishing accuracy how his incarceration in Auschwitz and sub camps unfolded. Hermann Joseph was arrested as a suspect assassin of Hitler in the Buergerbraeu Cellar in Munich. However he was released after an impeccable alibi proving his innocence. As a SPD member (short for Social Democratic Party) a party forbidden in the Third Reich, he worked in the underground, constantly watched by the Gestapo that was waiting for an occasion to arrest him.