In translating these accounts, I have taken care to preserve the tone and style of the speakers. These are not literary people making literary statements. They are people from all walks of life who try to express the reality of the nightmare they survived as sincerely and straightforwardly as they can. They seldom exaggerate. If anything, they are modest in their statements, often reluctant or unable to render monstrous deeds in graphic terms, preferring instead to rely on euphemisms, or to
fall back on commonplace adjectives like awful, terrible, and horrible.
It isn't the first time, it won't be the last time.
For a much earlier example, read the preface and then look at page 132 of Inside the Concentration Camps by Eugene Aroneanu
The best part of the preface:
You don't HATE journalist enough.
"I will decide what these people meant to say."