The short extract here comes from Arthur Koestler's memoir, Scum of the Earth, which recounts how he survived internment as a foreign national in France at the beginning the Second World War, escaped the Nazis and finally arrived in England, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Koestler had been a committed Communist and been imprisoned by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War but had become disillusioned. The extract tells how the Communist internees in his camp reacted to the Soviet-Nazi pact and how they found ways of deceiving themselves about the truth.

Image c/o Wikipedia, Fair Use.

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