Free Republic

The death books seem utterly ordinary, their covers inscribed with neither swastikas nor other frightening Nazi symbols. They are just the black-and-white, cardboard-covered composition books that generations of schoolchildren have used for handwriting practice. And, indeed, every entry is in neat cursive. On April 20, 1942, the commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria approved the special killing of 300 prisoners to mark the Fuehrer's birthday. The execution list runs for pages, each individual receiving a single line -- name, date of birth, place of birth, inmate number, and an epitaph, "By order of R.S.H.A. shot," the acronym for...