Customer Reviews

Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz

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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.

Olga Lengyel has written the most graphic, horrifying look at the holocaust I have read.
Olga was an uppermiddle class wife with a degree in the medical sciences. She was married to a doctor who was arrested by the Germans. She felt it was best to stay with her husband and was lulled by the Germans into thinking that she would be fine if she accompanied him. So she, her parents and children followed her husband only to discover that they were not to join him but were sent to a concentration camp.
At the camp an unwitting Olga made the mistake of telling the Germans her son was under 12. Though he was large and could pass for over 12, Olga thought he would be treated in a lenient manner due to his age. Little did she know older and young people were almost immediately put to death. If the loss of her parents, her children and not knowing what had happened to her husband were not enough Olga had to endure the mental and physical trials of the camp.
Those who were not put to death were put to work in the most menial tasks under the most horrible conditions.
Olga leaves nothing to the imagination. Here you will find the most graphic details of mans inhumanity to man. Naked roll calls while shivering for hours exposed to the elements, being examined everywhere when entering the camp, having all body hair clipped off, using the same bucket to eliminate in and eat from, the sex at the camp, the cruelness of the officers and of fellow campmates who were trying to save themselves, the things some women would do for a crust of bread, the smell of the camp, the beatings....Olga spares no detail.
It is not for the weak of stomach. You will feel the despair and wonder how man could ever be so cruel and pray that this never ever happens again.

I actually stumbled upon this book because it was referenced in "A Death in Vienna" by Daniel Silva (his fictional spy novels involving a character Gabriel Allon mostly had a holocaust theme). After reading Five Chimneys there was no question in my mind why Albert Einstein praised this book as such an important work. Olga Lengyel's horrific and heartwrenching tale filled me in on so much I did not know about the Nazi death camps - including the fact that many people who were neither Jews nor minorities were sent there "just because." The book was very emotionally draining (especially when Lengyel talks about what happened to pregnant women and the babies they delivered) but the book left me completely changed. The unimaginable courage and hope that Lengyel and other prisoners conveyed was a tribute to the human spirit.

In our daily quest to get more money, drive a bigger car, buy a better house - we forget the reality of how little we really need to be human beings. This book will be required reading for my children when they are older. I am completely humbled and grateful to Ms. Lengyel for her ability to replicate such painful experiences into this book.

Having members of my family (two still alive) that survived Auschwitz this was a book that I felt I had to read. It is like many other books that I have read about the Holocaust but the first from strictly a women's account of Birkenau. It may be a difficult read for some because of the stark descriptions that exist. The story does not sugar-coat nor mince words. This is a true to life account as best as can be expressed. The book will compel the reader to pose questions of their own abilities to survive and withstand the horrors that the author did. This book is a fairly easy read and once you pick it up, it is hard to put down. We need books like this because the numbers of those who survived are becoming fewer and fewer and the words that they write are testimonials to TRUTH and must never ever be forgotten.

I'm very sorry for the reviewer that uses "gruesome" to describe such an example of someone who survived to bear witness. I have probably one of largest private collections of books on the Holocaust that runs into the hundreds. I am 70 and have known many of the survivors (especially since many were children who were 10 or more years younger than soldiers). Some would share their story with me, some could not, but I believe that one thing that kept many alive was the need TO BEAR WITNESS. One book on this subject is like one book on a bloody battle of WWII, it is ugly--as war usually is--but it doesn't begin to help understand the war (or the Holocaust). There is the individual, the killers and collaborators, the governments, the people on both sides, all of which, if studied for the deep meaning, tells us much about the "human" race.

This book was first published in English in 1947. It presents life and death in Auschwitz in great detail, and offers an excellent overview of the concentration camp world. The author's own story is gripping and heart-wrenching. The early date, 2 years after WWII ended, ensures that the author's memories of the camp are still lucid and the details very precise. Olga Lengyel studied to be a physician, and her informed analysis of the treatment meted out to inmates make this book special. I view this book as a Holocaust Studies "benchmark" - other accounts often fall short of its quality and level of detail. It is also significant as an account of a woman's experience. Until recently, women's Holocaust experiences were a rather neglected area.

This is one of many books I have read on this topic. I was fascinated by the way the author offered even the smallest of details that deal a crushing blow to reality---such as what a prize a nearly destroyed tooth brush was....how a blob of margarine was enough to bartar to save your life. This text is vivid, conceise and offers the reader a view into the life of human beings that were treated as though they were already dead.

Although books on the Holocaust continue to be produced, and witnesses are continually gaining the strength to bear witness (thankfully!), I have not seen a book with the power of this one in years of searching.

Written just after the war - lending credibility to all those deniers who think that Auschwitz is a lie - the author gives tremendous detail of the struggle that was everyday life in the camp. Watching death all around her, it is amazing that she or anyone could garner the will to keep going with every new dawn.

If ever you search for a book that sums up the Holocaust, look no further.

Olga Lengyel's story is extraordinarily heartbreaking and powerful, but I think the book would have been even more effective and much easier to read if she had told her entire story from beginning to end in order instead of jumping around so much.

That small complaint aside this book should still be mandatory reading by anybody who has at least a little bit of humanity in them. Be warned though, Olga does not sugarcoat anything. I had to stop reading on more than one occasion cause I felt sick or thought I was going to cry.

Also read "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosinski.

Other reviewers have dealt in some detail with Olga Lengyel's experiences of utter horror leading up to and throughout her time at Auschwitz and Birkenau. So I will not go over the same ground.

Sufficient to say that I have read so very many books detailing the experiences of Holocaust survivors, yet this is one of the most gripping that I have read to date. Whenever Holocaust books come to mind, this is one of those that I always remember.

I can only echo the author's own words about the Holocaust;- 'This must not be allowed to happen again'.