Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz by Olga Lengyel
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Book Reviews of Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz
Book Review: Great Book
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is easy reading. I could not put it down. If you ever feel like you have had hard times this may make you think twice.Book Review: MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN...
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the story of a woman who spent about seven months in Auschwitz and survived to tell the tale. She wrote this book shortly after her ordeal, while her horrific experience was still fresh in her mind. It was definitely a mind numbing, life changing experience, as it saw the loss of her entire family, her parents, her children, and her husband. It should be noted that none of them, including Olga, were Jews.
Olga Lengyel lived an upper-middle class existence in Transylvania, in the capital city of Cluj. Her husband, Dr. Miklos Lengyel, was a Berlin trained medical doctor and the director of a private hospital that he had built shortly before the onset of World War II. Olga had also studied medicine and was qualified to be a surgical assistant. She and her husband had two young sons. They were all surviving the war as best they could, with Germans an occupying force. They even had a German soldier billeted with them for a time.
Olga had begun to hear disturbing things about what the Germans were doing in occupied territories, but had discounted it. She felt that Germany, a country that had contributed so much culturally to the world, could not be culpable of some of the atrocities of which she was hearing. She felt the stories that she was hearing were too fantastical to be believable. Then her husband came under the cross-hairs of the Nazis, accused of having his hospital boycott pharmaceuticals made by the German Bayer Company. This was the beginning of the end for the Lengyel family. Shortly thereafter in May of 1944, he was ordered to be deported to Germany.
When Olga heard this, she insisted on accompanying her husband, as she thought that he would be put to work in a German hospital. She naively asked the Nazis if she could accompany her husband, and they had no objection. When her parents heard, they insisted on going with them, which meant that Olga's young sons would also be going. Once they got to the train station and saw that they were all to board a cattle car with ninety-six other people, they knew that their nightmare was just beginning. Their destination was Birkenau-Auschwitz.
Olga recounts the horrors that awaited her family there. Hers is a testament to the brutality of the Nazi regime towards Jews and non-Jews alike. In it Olga chronicles her first hand observations of Dr, Joseph Mengele and his passion for twins and dwarfs, as well as his mad scientist medical experiments. She recalls her run ins with the "blonde angel", the exceptionally beautiful and sadistic Nazi, Irma Griese. She talks about the selections that were made, which determined who lived and who died. She makes it clear that the Jews were targeted, first and foremost, for extermination. She recounts the utter depravity with which the inmates of the camp were treated, creating a veritable hell on earth.
Ms. Lengyel gives a no-holds-barred account of life at one of the most notorious concentration camps run by the Nazis. It should be noted that the five chimneys in the title of her book refers to the chimneys of the crematoriums, which towards the end of the war appeared to be burning night and day. While her chronicle might have benefited from some better or more careful editing, this is a minor criticism, as hers is a powerful voice in the arena of holocaust literature. It is a book that should be read by those who are interested in learning more about these concentration camps and about man's inhumanity to man.
Book Review: How Did They Survive?
Summary: 4 Stars
Searingly, brutally honest, "Five Chimneys" takes us on a journey through Auschwitz that refuses to let us forget the horrors that a generation faced there. Olga Lengyel was a respected woman surgeon in her European home city along with her husband. The Nazi threat hung around them, but Olga and the rest of her family never realized the devastation it would bring to them. Then Olga's husband, Dr. Miklos Lengyel (then a proud hospital surpervisor)is called to be deported by the Nazis. The Nazis tell the families of those awaiting deportataion that they "may come", too. So Olga, her husband, her two young sons, and her elderly parents board a cattle car, whose then-unknown destination turns out to be Auschwitz. It is there, on a cattle car, where 96 people crowd into a space meant for 8 horses and Olga performs a stomach pumping on a woman who attempts suicide, that Lengyel's "6th sense" tells her there is worse to come.
And there certainly is. Shocked by the naked, starving prisoners, Olga remembers thinking, "Who are these women? What crime have they committed...they are abnormal, that is why they are isolated." Knowing nothing of the notorious "selection" system, she sends her sons to be "cared" for by her parents, never knowing that the "care" given by the Nazis was the gas chambers and the crematorium.
Surrounded by horror, defeat, despair, humiliation, starvation, and desparate bargains to avoid death, Olga perseveres. She describes her feelings of helplessness working at the camp's hospital, where water is scarce and anesthetic cannot be found, she tells us explicitly of her suffering at the hands of her less-than-human masters, and the utter despair that filled her life...in short what it meant to be a prisoner at Auschwitz.
The few slow parts in the autobiography are no excuse not to read this unforgettable account of life in Auschwitz. We must never forget the tragedy and needless deaths of that time, and "Five Chimneys" certainly proves that point.
Book Review: heartbreaking tale that needed to be told
Summary: 4 Stars
We know it happened; many of us have read books by others on the same subject--and yet it is hard to believe what went on. People gassed and tossed into ovens (even though some weren't even completely dead...) Then you've got your so-called Dr. Mengele who performed castrations on patients (male as well as female) without anesthetics. It goes on. It's gut-churning, but needs to be read. Because if we don't read about what happened, and if we don't see films about it--not only to honor all the innocent who were murdered (six million of the Jewish faith, and another six million non-Jewish), but as a reminder to remain vigil, keep alert...because you've got wannabe little Hitler jerks all over the place who'd love to do a re-peat of what their sorry and confused, not to mention mentally imbalanced "hero" set out to accomplish back in the 1940s--and, thankfully failed.
Makes you wonder what Olga Lengyel's life was like after she survived her ordeal. How do you go on, knowing that your husband, your two kids and both of your parents were senselessly slaughtered? How was she able to endure?
I read somewhere that she died a few years back. Not much else about her on the internet.
All I can say is read the book--and pass it on to someone else.
R.I.P.
Book Review: five chimneys
Summary: 4 Stars
I sat here for several minutes, not knowing where to begin writing this review. It's a serious book & deserves a serious review, but that's not my review or blogging style. I write like I talk - casual, chatty, and a little bit of babble. This book is about how one woman survived Hell - Auschwitz & Birkenau. I read history because history is more interesting then fiction half the time, and how does that old quote go? Something about learning about the past so you aren't doomed to repeat it? I read history for that reason, too.
Anyways, it's a tough book to read, and another one of those books that I read in short bits at a time in order to think about what I actually read. Your stomach churns at reading most of it. Lengyel writes very dispassionately, I think perhaps as her way of coping with the horrors? But the dispassionate doesn't take away any part of learning about her experience; in fact, I think you really feel it all the more for her calm way of explaining what happened to her.
This book is worth reading, but I wouldn't make it my number one suggestion, either.