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Oranienburg: First Authentic Report by an Escapee from the Concentration Camp. Carlsbad, 1934 – A diplomat’s report – a German prisoner who escaped from a concentration camp in the early days of the Nazi regime - Oranienburg: Erster authentischer Bericht eines aus dem Konzentrationslager Geflüchteten – “Oranienburg: First Authentic Report by an Escapee from the Concentration Camp” by German Reichstag member Gerhart Heinrich Seger, with a foreword by Heinrich Mann. Published by Graphia. Carlsbad (Czechoslovakia), 1934 – first edition. A courageous publication by the first political prisoner to successfully escape from the Oranienburg camp for opponents of the Nazi regime. Seger published this report shortly after his escape, aiming to expose the horrors taking place in the camp and to incriminate the Nazi regime. A harrowing firsthand testimony by a political prisoner who spent six months in the Oranienburg concentration camp, beginning just weeks after its establishment. He managed to escape and published this exposé shortly afterward in order to reveal the horrors occurring inside the camp and to indict the Nazi regime. Gerhart Seger (16 November 1896, Leipzig – 21 January 1967, New York) was a Social Democratic politician, journalist, and pacifist. From 1930 until March 1933, he served as a member of the German Reichstag. Due to the Social Democrats’ refusal to support the Enabling Act, Seger was among those parliamentarians persecuted, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp by the Nazi authorities.  Following the Nazi seizure of power in March 1933, Seger was one of the first Reichstag members to be placed in so-called “protective custody” by the National Socialists. He was initially held at the Dessau courthouse prison before being transferred on 14 June 1933 to the Oranienburg concentration camp along with other political prisoners. The first inmates sent to Oranienburg by the Nazi regime were accused of anti-regime activities. Seger, as a member of the Reichstag, was arrested for distributing anti-nationalist messages and taken to the camp as a “political prisoner.” In his book, he details the kinds of minor “offenses” that led to arrest and incarceration during that period. In one instance, a Hitler Youth boy hung an SS flag in the backyard of his home in the summer of 1932, in a neighborhood known for anti-Nazi sentiment. Four workers who were nearby tore down the flag and slapped the boy. A year later, they were caught by the SA and sent to Oranienburg, where they were publicly humiliated for that act. The Nazis hung a large placard around one of their necks detailing the “flag incident, ” and the four were forced to march in circles in the camp yard for twelve consecutive hours. The abuse in Oranienburg included sleeping on a concrete floor instead of mattresses, and straw sacks that served as both blankets and bedding, in the camp’s freezing underground cells. Seger describes the brutal acts committed by the SS in Room 16—known as the “Police and Interrogation Department”—including crimes carried out by the investigator Sturmbannführer Krüger. He recounts the forced labor imposed on the first inmates: building the camp’s infrastructure, paving the road between sections of the camp, draining nearby swamplands, constant starvation, and more. Among other things, Seger describes the brutality of the camp commandant Schäfer, who from the very founding of Oranienburg was chiefly responsible for establishing the detention cells in which much of the abuse took place. One of his ”pastimes, ” according to Seger, was to roam the camp in a drunken state at night, randomly pulling prisoners from the barracks and beating them to death. Seger provides the names of all the early deputy commandants of the camp and gives detailed accounts of the levels of cruelty each one practiced. A dedicated chapter is devoted to the “obstacle course” in the rear yard of the camp, which was designed to physically break the prisoners. It was a grueling track that required crawling and climbing in ways that were nearly impossible to complete. Any prisoner who failed to finish the course was beaten on the spot—and almost none succeeded. One of the most horrifying abuses Seger describes involves “defiant” inmates accused of insulting Hitler. These prisoners were locked upright in vertical stone coffins for hours—and sometimes days—resulting in permanent deformities and disabilities due to the prolonged standing and confinement. All of the atrocities in the camp were carried out under strict secrecy. Seger recounts how, on one occasion, a truthful report about the horrors of the camp managed to reach German radio. In response, the Nazis staged an elaborate deception to conceal the truth: the camp administration selected inmates who could play musical instruments and forced them to perform and sing, so that the sounds of music would reach the streets outside the camp and lead local residents to believe that normal,