Subtitled: 'A Doctor's Eyewitness Account'.
This relatively small book at 222 pages was written in 1946, shortly after the war. Dr. Nyiszli was a very well trained physician with forensic experience who, with his wife and daughter, was rounded up and sent in a train of cattle cars filled with Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Dr. Mengele, who oversaw the place, sorted through the prisoners as they came in and he wanted a forensics-trained person who could perform accurate autopsies and the author fulfilled that role. The author was at Auschwitz for about eight months and this book relates the utter insanity of that place. The four crematoria that were used are described as are the 'Sonderkommando' Jewish prisoners who had the job of killing and cremating the Jews. The multiple methods used to kill prisoners are described.
The only prisoner revolt at Auschwitz was by the twelfth Sonderkommando group and they killed 70 SS men and suffered 853 of their own killed. (They were about to be executed at the time so chose to fight).
Auschwitz had a capacity of 140,000 prisoners and killed maybe 4,000,000 while it was in operation. (The author's estimate. Other numbers -all lower- have been stated also).
This book is another first person account of World War 2 events.
In the foreword by Internationally known child psychologist from the University of Chicago, Bruno Bettelheim, it is interesting how Bettelheim is critical of the author, and it sounds like he is critical of him for surviving. Or for what he considers collaboration.
Worth reading if you have any interest in this sort of story.
