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.
