Sunday, July 31, 2011

Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli

I have always had an interest in the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, but this book took everything that I have   read, watched or heard and threw it out the window. This account had me cringing from the first page until the last. Dr. Nyiszli's eyewitness account of the horrific murders that took place in Auschwitz is not for the faint of heart. In one gripping portion of the book, Dr. Nyiszli recalls being ordered to boil the  bodies of two men in order to preserve their skeletons for the Anthropological Museum in Berlin. "After five hours, I tested the bodies and found that the soft parts were now easily separable from the bones" (p. 155).

This book, in all of it's horrific and unimaginable detail, is necessary. We must never forget the injustices that we have forced upon one another, for those that do not understand the past will repeat the same mistakes in the future. The voices of the innocent can be heard loudly in this book. Their screams, their fear, their agony permeates every page. The strength of this book is in the details and the way in which Dr. Nyiszli brought these victims back to life.

Auschwitz is written to be short and to the point. If you are looking to add to your knowledge of the Holocaust or want to learn more about the details minus the sugar coating, this is a book that you must read.

♥♥♥♥♥ - An Honorable Read

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fantastic review! I've read many books on Auschwitz and the Holocaust but it sounds like I definitely need to read this one. It's going on my "too buy next list".

Thanks for bringing our attention to this book.

Cheers,
Louise
BookBagLady
http://bookbaglady2.blogspot.com

Sharon Wilfong said...

Found you on book blogs. I'm glad you reviewed this book because I read everything I can WWII.
Here's some books I've reviewed from that time:
http://sharonhenning.blogspot.com/2009/09/secret-holocaust-diaries.html
and
http://sharonhenning.blogspot.com/2009/09/book-reviews-two-different-perspectives.html