Thanks for that insight.
My wife and I talked quite a bit about the book after we read it, and wondered aloud how anyone could return from those experiences and live a constructive life.
The fact that many people did is a testament to the resiliency of people. There were so many, not as famous as Louie Z. who went through some horrific things, but somehow survived, returned, married, had children and worked at jobs.
It is easy to think that the man who drank himself to death forty years later or shot himself in the head a week later is just as much a casualty of that war as any man killed on the front line in combat.
That even more did not is remarkable in and of itself.
One of the prisoners mentioned in the book was captured a very short time after the war started. That means that he was in the camp roughly twice as long as Louie Z. I can't imagine the mental suffering and physical deprivation he underwent over that time.