Carl Schrade spent eleven years in the Nazi camps for political crimes. He was eventually liberated, but by that time he had achieved the dubious honor of having spent the longest time recorded in the concentration camps. In The Veteran he presents, for the first time, his account of those years.

A Swiss citizen, Carl Schrade happened to travel to Berlin in 1934. There, in private conversation, he expressed some slight criticism of Hitler's regime. Schrade was arrested and sent from one camp to another for eleven years. He was a prisoner in Lichtenberg, Esterwegen, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Flossenburg. He was made to perform the worst and most humiliating duties and to act as a Kapo, the highest position in the prisoner hierarchy.

The diversity of his experience makes it possible for him to offer us a uniquely complete view of life in the camps. He describes the suffering and the torture that he both experienced and witnessed, and also presents a thorough analysis of the evolution of the camps and provides a comprehensive view of their varying organizations. Through Schrade's descriptions, we are able to see that there was not one Nazi personality type but an impressive diversity ranging from the utterly unspeakable barbarity of some of the SS to Dr. Demmel, who, in spite of the terrible danger he was exposing himself to, constantly tried to help the prisoners.

Although Schrade wrote an extraordinarily precise depiction of life in the camps, there is more to The Veteran than just a testimony. Schrade developed what he calls the ethic of choice. He came to believe that no matter the circumstances or how great the threat, an individual has the choice of staying humane or falling into indifference.

Exceptional for the number of years it covers, this manuscript—rediscovered over thirty years after the author's death—deserves to be ranked among the most important works to bear witness to the horror of the Holocaust.