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Roman Frister

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 12 Apr 2015, 02:54

Roman Frister died recently.

He was a concentration camp survivor (then aged 15), later journalist, book author, and founder of a university school of journalism.

Frister's frank and harrowing tale of being in the camp describes a horrible moral dilemma.

Camp inmates had to wear the regulation cap for morning roll call. Anyone bareheaded was instantly shot. One night Frister's cap was stolen.

In the dark of the hut he found a cap that belonged to someone else. Next day he heard that person shot.

Frister lived with this and a half-century on wrote a memoir, whose title The Cap was taken from the incident.

I read the book, some years ago now, but it still haunts me.

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