Customer Reviews

Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the few books I have read on the Holocaust that takes the reader to a depth of un-imaginable horror. Filip Muller takes you on his life story up to and including his stay at Auschwitz-Birkenau with riveting detail and accuracy. The chapter titled "The Inferno" was the hardest to read, let alone envision. I have seen actual photos of the "pits" as Muller describes them, yet the reality of the ghastly work he was forced to do cannot come through in words. I would cautiously recommend this to any serious student of Holocaust history.

[...] This book is an essential eyewitness view of life as a sonderkommando, and how the Nazi establishment in Auschwitz killed three and & half million people, all in a historically unprecidented short period of time. Muller describes the "shower" facade, and the mechanics of destroying that many bodies.

David Irving, the notorious holocaust denier, contends that the Nazis could not have killed eleven million, simply because of the amount of coke/charcoal needed to burn that many bodies. How did that happen in Auschwitz? Muller describes how Master Sergeant Otto Moll (who was in charge of the gas chambers) had the prisoners build large pits to burn an anticipated influx of Hungarians. These pits included brick "channels," which funneled the melted body fat from the fire into large cauldrens. The melted fat was then dumped back on top of the bodies, to encourage the fire & save on coal, fuel oil, and fire wood.

There are dozens--if not hundreds--of books about Auschwitz. Many are better written than "Eyewitness." Just off the top of my head, Borowski's collection of short stories "This Way for the Gas, Ladies & Gentlemen," Wiesel's "Night," Levi's "Survival"--they have better writing. But none of those books grasp the enormity of the sonderkommando experience, because none of those three were in the sonderkommandos like Muller. Similarly, Steiner's "Treblinka" is a more complete picture of the origin and evolution of the gas chambers. But Muller writes what he saw--what he lived--in a way that is unbearably moving. If you want to get a picture of Auschwitz, read this book--and Sara Nomberg-Przuytyk's "Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land."

All that said--let me get down from my high horse. Simply because a book is a holocaust memoir does not automatically make the book worth reading. For example, I found Frister's "The Cap: The Price of a Life" to be completely unreadable. I enjoyed it, but many people will also not care for Glazar's "Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka." In fact (taking a deep breath & cringing a little) aside from "Night," I am not wild about Wiesel. I think for historical analysis, Simon Wiesenthal is more informative, and from a moral philosophy perspective, nothing Wiesel wrote can touch Primo Levi's "The Drowned & the Saved."

This is a long way of my saying that while this book is not Shakespeare in its language, it is very readable--and very moving. This book is an important part of the history of the 20th century, and not one that can be replaced....even by a book as good as "Survival in Auschwitz."

Filip Muller's Eyewitness Auschwitz serves as a textbook for those interested (and willing) to examine the mass murder of Jews, Gypsies and political prisoners under the Third Reich. Muller claims to have witnessed the process from it birth in Auschwitz to its death in Birkenau shortly before the camp's liberation; accordingly, he spells out the details in a disturbing, meticulous fashion. The reader finds him/herself escorted through the notorious Block 11, its courtyard, the crematoria and the open burning pits. Muller recounts everything from the logistics of the ovens to the subterfuge the SS employed to lure prisoners into the gas chambers. Instances of revolt and insight into the plans and psychology of the camp resistance are also tackled. Some readers might find the account harrowing in its attention to grisly detail and facts; at times the book reads like a news story. Hence Muller's testimony is, perhaps, best read as a companion to other accounts that delve more deeply into the survivor's mind (such as the works of Tadeusz Borowski or Primo Levi). Further, Muller writes almost exclusively as a member of the Sonderkommando--those charged with the upkeep of the crematoria. This focus comes at the expense of attention to other areas of the camp that a holocaust scholar should explore.

Many books about Auschwitz are filled with dry narrations. It seems like people are afraid to talk about the subject, like they have the need to be politically correct or not to hurt anyone. I understand why but if you decide to write a book about subject do a good job regardless of the circumstances. This book relates the facts and everyday life in the camp the way it was. An author shares his feelings and thoughts. He describes behaviors (sometimes worse than barbaric) and survival instinct in the purest basic form. I liked this book. It is written well and it keeps reader at full attention. Chapters and story line flows smoothly. It's a book that describes harsh reality of the concentration camp that I wish no one every would have to go through again. If you liked this book there is also a similar one written by Dr. Perl called "I was a doctor in Auschwitz". Dr. Perl was a woman that went through the same thing as Muller but in the female part of the camp.

I loved this book but I find it hard to say that because of the sheer fact of what the people in this book went through. Muller's account of his years in auschwitz as a prisoner forced to work in the gas chambers is graffic and upsetting yet you wont want to put it down. It's hard to imagine what these people went through but reading this book is almost like you are right there seeing it with your own eyes. If you are interested in the subject i recommend this book to you, and if you arent interested in the subject i recommend this book anyways.

I first read this book in the spring of 1982 when I was 16. I was overwhelmed by the content and the author's description of the gas chambers at Auswitz, as well as the fine detail of the burning pits that were constructed to minimize fuel consumption as well as maximize the diposal of murdered persons. Later when I was 30 I read it again and wept for mr Muller and all those who did suffer so within the dark machinery of the SS. What I found fascinating was that the author became numb to the Horrors around him with the passage of time. This too happened to me while I read his words. He portrayed what he saw in a very vivid manner. I recommend this personal narrative very highly to those who wish to get a first hand look into the Holocaust.

Filip Muller wrote this account of his lengthy term as a slave laborer on the Auschwitz Sonderkommando immediately after the war. It remains the most powerful memoir of any Holocaust survivor, bar none. Muller is in the same league with Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski and Jorge Semprum (Literature or Life), although his account in no way approaches the literary. It doesn't have to. The details are searing by themselves--including the escape of two prisoners who fruitlessly warned the Allies what was occurring. These permanently imprint on the reader's memory. What lends Muller's account biblical proportions is his proximity to the evil heart of the death machine--throughout the war--his daily witness to mass murder, his memory of individual victims who fought to the last. He shows the grisly, methodical progression of Nazi inhumanity, the virtual-impossibility of escape, and the fierce spirit and repeated miracles one required to survive. Alyssa A. Lappen

I bought this book when I went to the Holocaust museum in D.C. This book is unbelievably heart stopping. This book takes you into a world of pain and terror. To be able to read about every momment of torture this man witnessed and partook in, is extremely moving. This book takes you deep inside the morbid ways of Hitler.

Highly recommended. Gripping, suspenceful. Manages to unnerve, shock, without hysterics--and this is the best type of approach for something this gruesome.

How did the author live through it? How would you have dealt with it? How would I?

Get it. Read it.

And for those who think by simply saying NEVER AGAIN that it won't, couldn't happen again, are only fooling themselves. Humans never learn a damn thing from history. Why? Because we're basically retarded.

It could happen again, and in fact, it has happened--to a lesser degree. I say any time a Hitler or Saddam wannabe rears his ugly head--you better believe there are a few of them out there even right now--confront
the control-hungry pissant to keep him from attaining enough power to reach his objective.

Without considerable background knowledge, the picture Muller paints is barely comprehensible. The objective strength of his testimony may be lost on a reader who is new to Holocaust literature; unless one has worked through the emotional degradation of Auschwitz, personal feelings will cloud the impact of Muller's evenly paced prose. His work is a blueprint of the day to day existence of the most long-lived inmates of an extermination camp. He does not dwell on the inherent sadism of the overseer or the indomitable spirit of the doomed. He reports on the developing mundanity of circumstances that could not conceivably ever become mundane. Yet it is this sense of pervasive routine that allowed not only the horrors to be perpetrated, but also the prisoners to survive. This is not a chronicle of heroics in the typical fashion of the oppressed overcoming the insurmountable foe. There is no glory that can be attached to the destruction of Auschwitz; indeed, it must not be destroyed, but remembered. The fact that it existed at all would be trivialized if the SS guards and their cohorts were envisioned as depraved and inhuman: their inhumanity then would be inevitable. Muller, intentionally or not, brings mass murder down to the level of discussing the weather or purchasing a newspaper; precisely the attitude required to coax pregnant women into a gas chamber or examining their corpses for hidden valuables afterward. Muller's testimony is a handbook on the mechanics of survival.