AUSCHWITZ: A DOCTOR'S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

AUSCHWITZ: A DOCTOR’S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT   

by Dr Miklos Nyiszli   (LWH) - (STAFF READING)

This book was quite disturbing as the title would assume it was recounting some of the atrocities of being a doctor in a most inhumane situation. A Hungarian Jewish Physician, Dr Nyiszli became a chief pathologist and retells what he had to endure living through his experience of living in one of the worst concentration camps, Auschwitz, and what he had to do to survive. The writer tells his story and the events of living next to the crematoriums, in great detail. Working for the notorious, Dr Mengele, the writer tells how he was forced to perform many medical experiments and autopsies on the Jews, and particularly those who were twins, dwarfs or had medical abnormalities. He tells of the gruesomeness of seeing and hearing hundreds of thousands of Jews go to their death in the fires and through starvation, disease and exhaustion.

This was not a feel good read but I am fascinated by the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust and how Hitler came to have so much power over the German people.  Dr Nyiszli goes into great detail of what happened in the  dissection rooms and how occasionally he was able to ‘delay’ death for some.

I did feel for this doctor who also had his wife and daughter living, he hoped, in the concentration camp, but at times I wondered if he was a worm for performing the autopsies and living a more prosperous life, if possible, within Auschwitz. Was he just as bad as the ones who gave orders? What extent would he go to to save his life? What would you or I have done in the same situation. Is living through this experience 'surviving' at all?

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone with a weak stomach but this was an eye-witness account of what happened and I believe we should never let those atrocities become dull in our mind.  It is an historical memoir. It always amazes me why the many thousands of Jew didn’t just risk it all and overpower the guards, who seemed to be in much less numbers than the Jews, but the forward, written by Bruno Bettelheim touches on this. He also states:  "Those who seek to protect the body at all cost die many times over. Those who risk the body to survive as men have a good chance to live on."