In 1939 after the outbreak of World War II, he was arrested by the Gestapo for anti Nazi activity in Špilberk prison, an old castle on the hilltop in Brno, Southern Moravia.

Later during the war he was transferred and managed to survive throughout five-and-a-half years in other concentration camps: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Neuengamme, and 28 months in Auschwitz, from 1942 to 1945.

[1] It was different from other transports: there was no selection and gassing, families were allowed to stay together, they were not shaved and they received old civilian clothes and shoes rather than striped prison grabs and wooden clogs and were not sent outside to perform hard forced labor.

After a series of risky episodes, in constant fear of betrayal, they ended up sheltering with the Frýdl family in the mountain village of Liptál.

Other transports from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz were selected and gassed in the regular way—thus perished Kulka's mother, Malvína, and two sisters Elisabeth and Josephine; his brothers Otto and Albert survived.

A special chapter in the book is devoted to the history and demise of the "family camp" in Birkenau, describing the murder of thousands of Czech Jews.

Another book, Night and Fog (co-authored with Ota Kraus), is a study of the economic system of Nazi concentration camps and genocide motives.

Another project he initiated is erecting stone tablets on the wall at the entrance to the Vsetín Jewish cemetery, with engraved names of the holocaust victims from his home town and the surroundings.

In recognition of his life's work Erich Kulka was awarded in 1989 an honorary doctorate by the Spertus College of Judaica in Chicago.

In 1993, he founded at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem a fund that bears his name, which provides scholarships for outstanding doctoral research in the history of Czech Jews and the Holocaust.