The prisoners in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau saw stripes in the sky in August 1944, as allied bombers flew over their camp. After having destroyed a nearby industrial target, the bombers returned home, leaving the prisoners to wonder why the camp's gas chambers and crematoria had not been bombed and the factory of death destroyed. Gerhard Durlacher was one of Auschwitz's prisoners and one of its few survivors. Stripes in the Sky, his first book, reflects his personal quest to discover the reasons for the passive silence in the face of the mass destruction of European Jewry. A touching memoir of survival, from a prisoner held in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.