Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 WOW!! November 19, 2008
Although, it is a horrific account of the terrors of Auschwitz, it is worth the read. I finished this book in a day.
 not good for leading a happy life July 3, 2008
1 out of 12 found this review helpful
The problem with this book is that it thrusts a very negative and dark side of life into all that read it. Of course the book carries factual data that needs to be known- but we all must be careful about how obsessed we become with the darkness of humanity. Reading books like this keep the holocaust with us. We continue to persecute ourselves every time we re-live the sadness and desperation that these people were forced to undergo. Their monstrous deeds continue. It is good to know what happened. In the end though, we must let it go and live happily.
This book should be under fiction rather than what it's used as. March 21, 2008
5 out of 11 found this review helpful
Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, the supposed author of Auschwitz, a Doctor's Eyewitness Account. There really was a Dr. Nyiszli. He was a Hungarian doctor. He was sent to Birkenau (not Auschwitz), where he worked in the pathology lab under the infamous Dr. Mengele. After the war, he testified at the Nuremburg trials. He died in 1949. The book was published in 1951. Throughout the book, the author says he was in Auschwitz. He says there were four crematoria at Auschwitz. In fact, there was one crematorium at Auschwitz, and four at Birkenau. Obviously anyone who was there would know that. Anyone who was there would know which camp was which. At the end (page 206), when they are evacuating in January of 1945, the author says
We left, filled with the feverish sensation of liberation. Direction: the Birkenau KZ, two kilometers from the crematoriums.
Dr. Nyiszli didn't leave Auschwitz and go in the direction of Birkenau. He was already in Birkenau. This is just the most glaring impossibility in a book full of impossibilities. This book was not written by Dr. Nyiszli. It couldn't have been written by anyone who was there. And yet this book is cited as one of the most authoritative witness statements.
If one wants to know what happened in the concentrations camps, and WWII, your last source should be books written by so called eyewitnesses, or by idiots, that claim it never happened in the first place.
Bone-chilling account of Aushwitz-Birkenau January 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A very vivid and frightening first-hand account of the horrendous atrocities committed at Auschwitz through the eyes of Dr. Mengele's assitant (Dr. Miklos Nyiszli). At times details were nauseating; not for the faint of heart or children! But this book is a must read. Everyone should be educated on the terrible crimes against humanity committed by the SS.
Gripping Horrific Account of Life in the Auschwitz Death Camp December 23, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Dr. Miklos Nyiszli has written (1960) a graphic, gruesome, first-hand account of his time working as a doctor in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Due to his previous medical training in medicine and pathology, Dr. Nyiszli was spared by the hideously inhuman Dr. Josef Mengele, to be the medical doctor to the Sonderkommando, the 600-plus Jewish prisioners who actually operated the creamatorium ovens which incinerated over 3,000 inmates a day. Dr. Nyiszli also became the chief pathologist for Dr. Mengele's infamous experiments on Jewish prisoners, performing disections and autopsies, all explained in great detail.
Dr. Nyiszli had permission from Dr. Mengele to travel through the camp, and therefore witnessed atrocities that are shock all sensibilities, and are sickening in the cruelty in which they were carried out. One wonders how the guards can kill in such a matter of fact manner, so many men, women, children, grandmothers, and grandfathers, without being emotionally devastated. He described the entire process of how the Jewish populations were induced to walk into the gas chambers without resistance. How they died a horrible death in the gas chambers, how their bodies were striped of hair and gold teeth, and then incinerated in non-stop 24 hour a day operation in the four ovens. When the gas chambers were overflowing with Jewish bodies, he writes of hundreds of others standing in line to be shot to death with a single bullet in the back of the head, then dumped into a long burning death pit, created for just such a purpose. He describes how a 16 year old girl miraculously survived being gassed in the chamber, only to be shot the next day. He describes how whole camps of upwards of 4,500 people were "liquidated" in one day. Dr. Nyiszli is continually stunned by the utter brutality of the German Nazis and the ultimate purpose of Auschwitz - to destroy the Jewish race and other "undesirables".
Since the Sonderkommando group of prisoners were themselves shot to death every 4 months to prevent anyone from telling the world what the Germans were doing in the camps, it is a miracle that Dr. Nyiszli survived to tell the atrocities of the death camp.
Fortunately for history, and for the lesson of man's inhumanity to man, we have Dr. Nyiszli's account to tell the world the truth about what happened in Hiltler's concentration camps. Although very disturbing to read, this is an important account that absolutely refutes modern-day revisionists who claim there was no holocaust, or that is was greatly exaggerated.
This book is not for young eyes. The descriptions of the deaths are too vivid. However, it is an important book for students of history and for any who need to be reminded of the incredible cruelty man is capable of. While sobering and horrific to read, I do recommend this book to those interested in the holocaust. It is one of the better books in the genre.
James Konedog Koenig
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