Miklos Nyiszli
Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account
Plot: Auschwitz was one of the first books to bring the full horror of the Nazi death camps to the American public; this is, as the New York Review of Books said, "the best brief account of the Auschwitz experience available."
When the Nazi's invaded Hungary in 1944, they sent virtually the entire Jewish population to Auschwitz. A Jew and a medical doctor, the prisoner Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared death for a grimmer fate: to perform "scientific research" on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the man who become known as the infamous "Angel of Death"--Dr. Josef Mengele.
My Review and Thoughts:
There are many horrors in the world. Many acts of depravity throughout history, but one dark stain of reality is World War 2. The Nazi's are the beacon of hate and the bodification of evil. A moment in history that forever stained the makeup of time. A powerful example of what true hell could be like in the actions and situations caused by a race of men and women calling themselves the superior race, when in honesty the nasty reality was man destroying his own self.
You ever enter a book not really knowing what your going to get into. Well that is what happened with me with this book. I thought I was just going to be reading a text book filled with history. Was I wrong, what I got was a mind altering reality check of what true evil is. I have been changed by this book, altered by its reality of the truth in history.
My heart broke, my mind halted and my tears flowed at the true unspeakable horrors this book mentions. Knowing this is all true upsets me more. I felt lost in the pages as the truth of a moment in history invaded my heart and mind and created a gaping hole.
Powerful and haunting. A true nightmare inducing book of real depravity. The disturbing reality and the matter of fact talk or text book like nature of pure evil acts play with the readers mind. This is a book that disturbs the very basic foundations of human emotions. The dark concept of such hateful and lack of humanity in the images and actions described bear down upon the reader.
The flooring descriptions and at times emotionless candor of words from SS officers or Nazi's get to the reader. It's written like this is normal, this is what happens because there was nothing anyone could do about the horrible despicable acts perpetrated. Everything mentioned in this book is real.
This book is real, it's scary. It's apart of true history that stains it's very reality into us all. Human kind has always wanted to know the true logic of what happened at that camp, that death camp, and yet there is no logic, it's pure evil. Evil some say is not real, it might be a figment, a created idea but what happened in those camps formed evil as reality. This is a book that should be read and educated with in schools and in general population so that we don't repeat the atrocities of these death dealers.
If there is a concept of evil, if it does exist, if the devil is real then the acts of the Nazi's mentioned and detailed in this book is all the truth one needs to grasp the real reality and makeup of the concepts of evil and the devil. For these actions that took place are described and defined in history, so the Nazi death dealers can be looked at as evil and as the persona of the devil.
For these aspects are not mere words or fictionalized fairy tales for they are real. Once you read this book you can never deny what happened. The matter of fact approach to 3,000 innocent people being killed at one moment like a light switch being flicked is a haunting reminder of the monstrosity this moment in history was. There are those asinine people out there that try to ridicule peoples take on the Nazi's saying most of the statements by eyewitnesses are exaggerated or this book has false statements because the math is off, so what the math might be a little off, how can one deny that the genocide happened. To deny is like saying there is no earth. Genocide did happen, a whole population was almost destroyed. And if so called bigots and haters only can come up with the defense of math, it shows you how ignorant they really are.
I have read many disturbing books on war, crime, murder, abuse, rape but this book is above and beyond the aspect of what any other book can capture. This is torment and torture and depravity that explores the very depths of true horror on page. This book will haunt me, it will remain deep inside my thoughts. The honesty of the genocide mentioned is a life stopping reality.
I think what is so horrible is that one can live knowing this in first hand knowledge, but if it was not for Dr. Mikolos Nyiszi this true account could never be comprehended at what really happened. The true ordeal and makeup of the atrocities by the death dealers is displayed here in all its agonizing facts, for it has to be told, it has to be remembered, it has to be explored and never ever forgotten.
So I want to say to this book and memory of Dr. Miklos Nyiszli that I thank you for adding this text of what happened so that modern and future generations can understand and experience your first hand knowledge of horror.
Page 56 " When the last gold tooth had been removed, the bodies went to the incineration kommando. There they were laid by threes on a kind of pushcart made of sheet metal. The heavy doors of the ovens opened automatically; the pushcart moved into a furnace heated to incandescence. The bodies were cremated in twenty minutes. Each crematorium worked with fifteen ovens, and there were four crematoriums. This meant that several thousand people could be cremated in a single day. Thus for weeks and months -even years - several thousand people passed each day through the gas chambers and from there to the incineration ovens. Nothing but a pile of ashes remained in the crematory ovens. Trucks took the ashes to the Vistula, a mile away, and dumped them into the raging waters of the river."
I believe one of the most horrifying moments was the mention of twins how they experimented upon them. The mention of two, two-year-old twins clouds my thoughts. A shocking and heart moving moment was when the mention of Oberschaarfuhrer Molle an SS Nazi who killed thousands by placing them in massive burning dug pits, he would shot them and burn over 5 thousand Jews, sending most still alive into the flames screaming and yelling in horrible pain.
Page 84-85 "The Czech Camp consisted of about 15,000 deportees brought from the Theresienstadt ghetto... the hour of extermination arrived.....the children's bodies were mere skin and bones, and the elderly prisoners were so weak they could scarcely walk....Hunger had reduced the prisoners to raving, moaning maniacs....Diarrhea, dysentery and typhus had begun their deadly work. Fifty or sixty deaths a day was normal....Several hundred SS soldiers surrounded the Czech area and ordered the inmates to assemble. Their cries of terror as they were loaded onto the waiting vans were terrible to hear...."Liquidation Day" found some 12,000 prisoners left in the Czech Camp. From among that number 1,500 able-bodied men and women were chosen, along with eight physicians. The rest were sent to number two and number three crematoriums. On the following day the Czech Camp was silent and deserted. I saw a truck loaded with ashes leave the crematorium and head towards the Vistula. This the Auschwitz muster rolls were reduced by more than 12,000 "units," and one more bloody page was added to the Auschwitz archives. That page contained only the following brief inscriptions: "The Czech section of the Auschwitz concentration camp was liquidated this date due to a prevalence of typhus among the prisoners. Signed: Dr. Mengele, Hauptsturmfuhrur I Lagerazt".
There is no greater horror then this book except the true ordeal. Nothing I have ever read compares to the truthful descriptions of evil that happened. Just when you think it can't get any worse it does. The innocent nature of a father and son being examined. They are feed and then cut open and then boiled and then the parts had been eaten by other starving inmates, this was a moment in the book I wont forgot nor will I forget anything in this book.
Tragic and horrible and some of the most god awful truths ever acted out in history are explored in graphic detail in this book. This is a must own, must read and must be taught type of book so that all generations understand, accept and never fall again into this horrible act of genocide upon any living being.