Customer Reviews

80629 a Mengele Experiment

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I recently read Jack Oran "A Mengele Experiment," having a keen interest in holocaust memoirs i found it outstanding. The impeccable detail in which he writes puts you in the concentration camp yourself. I could not put it down, the writing is powerful, and helps you put yourself into history and lets the reader expand as he wants to. I would recommend this book to readers who like personal memoirs, and world war II novelists.

After meeting Jack Oran in 1994, I read the book of his experiences during the holocaust and after. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading a first-hand account of months in a prison camp, on the death march and piecing together a life after the war. There were days when I couldn't put it down and others when I could only read short passages. The message that this man brngs to us is that prejudice in any form is wrong and dangerous. This was the first book I had read about the holocaust. Each year I take a student group to the Holocaust Museum in Houston so that they might better understand the history they learn in textbooks. I am ordering two more copies to loan to my students and others.

This book is one of the most powerful Holocaust books that I have ever read and it will grip you intensely from beginning to end. It is extremely well written and will make most readers angry that innocent people can be treated in such a manner for just one reason alone. Just because they were Jewish.

This is the heartrending story of Yakoff Skurnik (Jack Oran), including his experiences as a Jew growing up in Poland and in relation to his imprisonment during the Nazi Holocaust. Yakoff's childhood/upbringing in Poland is described amongst an almost palpable anti-Semitism in what is depicted as an "inborn national pass-time" within the local/native, Polish population. Even the ancient myth of the "blood libel" still being openly taught amongst a number of other anti-Jewish prejudices which were continually being used to build generations of unjustified hostility. A hostility acted upon with violence at almost every given opportunity.

Shortly after the Nazis entered Yakoff's home town of Sierpc, the book describes how the SS & Gestapo publicly burnt down the town's oldest and largest synagogue in broad daylight. The local fire-engine was stopped at gunpoint and the synagogue allowed to burn. For their amusement the Nazis then forced the Jews to form a long line of men passing single buckets of water in an utterly hopeless attempt to quench the flames. When the men were eventually exhausted, they were then forced to `dance' around the burning synagogue at gunpoint. To further their amusement the Nazis then forced the males to strip from the waist down and crawl around the synagogue on their hands and knees. Even the elderly were not spared, indeed some elderly Jews had their beards publicly clipped for further amusement. The enormous public shame and degradation, in full view of the watching Polish civilian population who were not harassed by the Nazis, was only matched by the enthusiasm and perverse pleasure of the SS & Gestapo responsible.

The story progresses to Auschwitz & Birkenau concentration camps and the "selection" upon arrival. Following which a long column, each individual wearing the prominent yellow, six pointed `Star of David', (including the elderly, the frail, all females, as well as children and babes in arms - including most of Yakoff's family) proceeded straight to the gas chambers. Only the males considered "able to work" were spared instant death.

The "selection" and Yakoff's other experiences described here are replete with further episodes of degradation, beatings and other sick/perverted Nazi jokes which rend the imagination as to how man can stoop to such deranged levels. Yakoff personally witnessing many fellow Jewish inmates being beaten to death in front of him by "senior prisoners", who used their heavy sticks against the heads of the victims until their skulls audibly cracked.

Another of the many slaughters involved an episode on Christmas Day itself. After the Nazi troops had attended Church, tens of thousand of only Jewish prisoners were selected to run a gauntlet along a mud filled track lined on both sides with troops carrying batons and trained German Shepherd attack dogs. Each Jewish prisoner was forced to carry a quantity of rocks and run the gauntlet whilst being beaten at every step by wooden clubs and bitten by dogs. Those who fell or slipped were beaten to death, their bodies chewed by the dogs. Thousands died.

What also pervades the described concentration camp procedures is the lengths to which the Nazi regime was prepared to go to ensure accuracy in documenting the numbers and identities of Jewish prisoners in custody and even those who were murdered. The corpses were always piled in groups of five high for ease of counting and "disposal". The left arm of each dead prisoner was pulled out and his tattooed number taken, ticked off against a list of the prisoners, before being transported to the crematoria.

In due course, Yakoff and a number of other Jewish prisoners were selected for "medical experimentation" by Nazi "medical" staff under Dr. Josef Mengele. The experiences and inhumane levels of depravity incorporated into the experiments are not suitable for mention in any review. Suffice to say that they are beyond anything previously experienced in the camps by Yakoff. The experiences described are not for the squeamish, yet to appreciate the context of the Jewish suffering and the levels of Nazi barbarity it is perhaps necessary to persevere & read the agonising accounts of Yakoff, as one who managed to survive against all the odds, whilst others who were experimented upon at the same time perished.

Yakoff's experiences are described until his liberation towards the war's end. It is difficult to comprehend the vastness of the Nazi death machine at work here. In Birkenau alone, the gas chambers/crematoriums could ruthlessly murder/dispose of over 2,000 at a time, many times a day. The casualty figures are akin to numerous "September 11" type tragedies every single day, for many years. We all owe it to ourselves to read this book and to ensure that this does not happen again. I highly recommend this book.

If you can read this book all the way through, you will never read it again, and you will never forget any part of it. And you will never let this happen again. Incredible.

I have read numerous books on the concentration camps of World War II and none have come close to this! Absolutely incredible writing, combined with huge amounts of factual information, I believe that everyone who is interested, and even those of you are not, should read this story of an incredible man and his survival of an ordeal almost beyond the imagination. Could you have made it?

This is told factually, in an easy-to-read style, without glamourization, and as such is an excellent addition to eyewitness Holocaust documentation, a critical endeavor. This would be an excellent choice for high school history/social studies required reading on the topic, perhaps an alternative to "Night."

In the last few years I have read many books relating to the Holocaust, but none as detailed and well-written as this one. The book was one of the best I've read in a while, and nicely illustrates most of the aspects of the Holocaust. I would recommend this book for anyone who already knows a lot about the subject, or anyone who knows nothing. 80629: A Mengele Experiment, has made me want to read more books on the subject. This is an excellent book that I encourage you all to read.

It literally took me several months to get through this book. I study the holocuast from every aspect. Have been to the Museum in D.C. and still can't fix my mind or heart on what these people have endured. This is a heart experience. I was at the signing of this man's book and was confounded to realize after I had read it that in his eyes he looked evil in the face. I will never know how they endure these horrors of man hating man and nations hating nations. I truly believe if I could phathom this I would understand evil to this degree and God knows I don't want to understand this kind of hate. Read the book and study! I pray history never repeats itself but it does. When I looked into this man's face and then read the book my heart broke. I keep it out in the open for those around to see and hopefully they will ask. I will tell them to read it and pray. As the saying goes...For evil to succeed it takes good men to do nothing!

I agree with the other reviews, I could not put this book down, it was so captivating. I really felt as if I was right there; so detailed were the descriptions. And, it gave me great info for my historical newspaper article in english class. Don't read this book if you get depressed easily though. Its sad!!!!!

Jack or as I called him, Mr. Oran was a big influence when I was young. I worked for him and for a time, dated one of his daughters. I saw this number (80629) on his arm every day when I worked for him. He told me that he had survived the war, in a concentration camp, when I asked one day many years ago. Last week, I was buying a car at a friend's dealership in Dallas and ran into someone that had worked with Mr. Oran at his business. As we reminisced, he mentioned that this book had been written about Mr. Oran's experiences during that time. Details that he shared with me stopped me cold. While I had a sliver of knowledge about what had happened, I had no idea the extent of suffering that Yakov (Jack) and the rest of the prisoners had endured!

I do not have possesion of this book at the moment, but am purchasing it tonight. And, I'll know, as Paul Harvey is want to say, the rest of the story. Pray that these attrocities are never visited on the human race again. And just so the reader knows, I am a Gentile.