Much has been written about the Nazi concentration camps, but one camp--Buchenwald--stands out as the most horrific of them all. THE BEASTS OF BUCHENWALD is the story of Buchenwald's brutal first commandant, Karl Koch, and his equally brutal wife, Ilse. Their reign of terror, which included beatings, torture, and the killing of helpless inmates so their tattooed skin could adorn lampshades and other personal items, ended with Karl's execution for embezzlement and Ilse's war-crimes trial of the century.

THE BEASTS OF BUCHENWALD not only exposes the Kochs but explores the environment they lived in and the concentration camp they shaped. The evil they perpetrated was hardly banal, and they themselves were sadistic, corrupt, and perverse. THE BEASTS OF BUCHENWALD is a provocative look inside the heart of the vicious Nazi regime at their most horrific concentration camp.

I was only seventeen years old when the knock on the door came late one night. The French police barged in, arresting me and my father as members of the French Resistance. After months of incarceration in French prisons, two thousand inmates were jammed into twenty rail cars. Our destination was Buchenwald, the most horrific camp in Nazi Germany, where we were viewed by our SS keepers as expendable sub-humans and forced to work as slave laborers. I was beaten and starved. I witnessed brutal tortures and senseless murders. But I survived.

In 1943, sixteen-year-old Paul Steinberg was arrested in Paris and deported to Auschwitz. A chemistry student, Steinberg was assigned to work in the camp's laboratory alongside Primo Levi, who would later immortalize his fellow inmate as "Henri," the ultimate survivor, the paradigm of the prisoner who clung to life at the cost of his own humanity. "One seems to glimpse a human soul," Levi wrote in Survival in Auschwitz, "but then Henri's sad smile freezes in a cold grimace, and here he is again, intent on his hunt and his struggle; hard and distant, enclosed in armor, the enemy of all." Now, after fifty years, Steinberg speaks for himself. In an unsparing act of self-examination, he traces his passage from artless adolescent to ruthless creature determined to do anything to live. He describes his strategies of survival: the boxing matches he staged for the camp commanders, the English POWs he exploited, the maneuvers and tactics he applied with cold competence. Ultimately, he confirms Levi's judgment: "No doubt he saw straight. I probably was that creature, prepared to use whatever means I had available." But, he asks, "Is it so wrong to survive?" Brave and rare, Speak You Also is an unprecedented response to those dreadful events, bringing us face-to-face with the most difficult questions of humanity and survival.

In his astonishing memoir, the Holocaust survivor and Chief Rabbi of Israel shares his story of faith and perseverance through WWII and beyond. Israel Meir Lau, one of the youngest survivors of Buchenwald, was just eight years old when the camp was liberated in 1945. Descended from a 1,000-year unbroken chain of rabbis, he grew up to become Chief Rabbi of Israel—and like many of the great rabbis, Lau is a master storyteller. Out of the Depths is his harrowing and inspiring account of life in one of the Nazis deadliest concentration camps, and how he managed to survive against all possible odds. Lau, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, also chronicles his life after the war, including his emigration to Mandate Palestine during a period that coincides with the development of the State of Israel. The story continues up through today, with that once-lost boy of eight now a brilliant, charismatic, and world-revered figure who has visited with Popes John Paul and Benedict; the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and countless global leaders including Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Tony Blair.

Ilse Koch and Rudolph Spanner were both accused of monstrous crimes during WWII. Ilse Koch was accused of having Buchenwald prisoners murdered so that she could have decorative and personal items, such as lampshades and purses, made from their tattooed skin. Rudolph Spanner was accused of using the bodies of Jewish prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp to make soap. Both cases were introduced into evidence at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, though neither Koch nor Spanner were charged in that proceeding. Ilse Koch was eventually tried by both American and German authorities: she was sentenced to life imprisonment twice, though her initial life sentence from an American tribunal was reduced to four years. She eventually committed suicide in a German prison in 1967, one of the last German war criminals in custody. Rudolph Spanner, on the other hand, was never prosecuted, lived openly and freely in the Federal Republic of Germany, and died of natural causes. Why did these two cases follow such different trajectories? This book explores some of the reasons for these very different outcomes. It also clarifies what is known about the lampshades alleged to have been made from human skin, as the rumors of Ilse Koch's involvement with these objects contributed so much to her fate. Last seen in a basement in Indiana, it seems unlikely now that any of the pieces of the lampshade will ever resurface. We may thus never know of what the infamous lampshade was really constructed.

(Updated and revised by Dennis R. Hillman) The original and unvarnished account of one of Christianity's most dramatic conversions--the autobiography of John Newton, the author of "Amazing Grace." This is the ultimate, full-length hymn story, as spectacular and compelling today as when it was first written.