Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

"Eyewitness Auschwitz" by Filip Muller (180 pages, 1979).Filip Muller was for three years imprisoned in Auschwitz, a slave laborer who worked in the Sonderkommando; his job placed him in the crematorium loading bodies into the ovens. Muller's testimony, documented in explicit and painful detail, is a vitally important capture of the worst evils perpetrated by the Nazis. Below are several passages that struck this reader particularly hard;Describing the aftermath of a brutal and murderous day, "Fischl examined everything carefully. Then he divided the booty into seven scrupulously equal parts. In spite of what happened today Fischl appeared to be the most satisfied among us. The Lord Adonai had hearkened to him: now he owned a prayer book in Hebrew and a set of Tefilin. Early next morning he went through the ritual of putting on Tefilin... He prayed so fervently and humbly that God - if he existed - must surely have heard his voice; for it rose from a place where men and women, who like himself believed in the Eternal One and who adored the Almighty Lord, were daily slaughtered like cattle. And this foreman who was forced to help the SS murderers take his fellow Jews to their doom, this strong man who, at first glance, seemed ready for anything, never once in his innermost soul renounced the faith of his fathers. At this moment he must have been alone among Jews all over the world to praise God's name in a place where that name was desecrated in the vilest possible manner. To me Fischl seemed a creature from another world, a world solely ruled and embodied by a God whom I sought in vain to comprehend in Auschwitz." Page 35Describing the cremation in open air pits of the Hungarians: "The corpses in the pit looked as if they had been chained together. Tongues of a thousand tiny blue red flames were licking them. The fire grew fiercer and flames leapt higher. Under the ever increasing heat a few of the dead began to stir, writhing as though with some unbearable pain, arms and legs straining in slow motion, and even their bodies straightening up a little, hesitant and with difficulty, almost as if with their last strength they were trying to rebel against their doom. Eventually the fire became so fierce that the corpses were enveloped by flames. Blisters which had formed on their skin burst one by one. Almost every corpse was covered with black scorch marks and glistened as if it were greased. The searing heat had burst open their bellies: there was the violent hissing and spluttering of frying in great heat. Boiling fat flowed into the pans on either side of the pit. Fanned by the wind, the flames, dark red before, now took on a fiery white hue: the corpses were burning so fiercely they were consumed by their own heat. The process of incineration took five to six hours. What was left barely filled a third of the pit. The shiny whitish grey surface was strewn with countless skulls." Page 138Describing the preparations to in the crematorium for the murder of the 'Family Camp': "Voss was sitting at a table, thoughtfully drumming the table top with his pencil and consulting his wrist watch; then he began scribbling figures on a scrap of paper. After a while he turned to the Kapos and said: 'To get the stiffs burnt by tomorrow morning is no problem. All yo have to do is to see that every other load consists of two men and one woman from the transport, together with a Mussulman and a child. For every other load use only good material from the transport, two men, one woman and a child. After every two loading's empty out the ashes t prevent the channels from getting blocked.'" Page 98"I was watching a young mother. First she took off her shoes, then the shoes of her small daughter. Then she removed her stocking, then the stockings of the little girl. All the time she endeavored to answer the child's questions steadily. When asked: "Mummy, why are we undressing?" her mother replied "Because we must." When the little girl went on to ask: "Is the doctor going to examine me, and make me well again?" her sorrowful mother replied: "He will, my darling, soon you will be well, and then we'll all be happy." It cost he unfortunate woman all of ger self control to utter these words. She was struggling to go on talking to her beloved child quite normally to spare her the terror of her imminent death.... What were her innermost thoughts at this moment? Was she remembering her own youth, her home town, her parents' house or the brief days of her marriage?At last the SS man came to take her to the place of execution. She lifted up her little girl and hugged her tenderly. She even forgot, so engrossed with her child was she, to bid farewell to her husband.... And now she stood in front of the wall of execution, holding her child clasped tightly in her arms. The room reeked of fresh, warm human blood. Motionless, her eyes closed, the woman waited for the end; she waited and waited for the killer bullet to take her away from this tormenting life, from this hostile world, into another realm.... Meanwhile Voss, the executioner, was circling round mother and child looking for a spot on the child's little body at which to aim his gun. When the distracted mother noticed this she began to twist and turn to the left and right, back and forth, anything to take her child out of the field of fire. Suddenly three shots cracked through the silence. The little girl was hit in the side of the chest. Her mother feeling her child's blood flowing down her body lost all self control and flung her daughter straight at the murderer's head while he was already aiming the barrel of the gun at her." Page 72

With the advent of the Nazis, the Catholic Monsignor Tiso - President of Slovakia - and his Hlinka Guards expelled most of the Jews from their Slovakian homeland, promising them safety and "work in the East." It was in this way that Filip Muller, born in the Slovakian town of Sered, found himself first in a cattle car and then as a prisoner in Auschwitz I, in April 1942.The Wannsee Conference, at which the forthcoming destruction of the Jews of Europe was discussed, more-or-less detailed and finalized, had taken place on 20 January 1942, scarcely three months prior to Filip Muller's arrival at Auschwitz, and so the Nazis were not yet well organized and prepared for the huge catastrophe they were about to wreak on Europe. It must be said, though, that the destruction of Europe's Jews was already well under way, gassings at Chelmno having successfully started in December 1941, with the simple expedient of packing gullible, naked Jews into vans and killing them with carbon monoxide from the exhausts. It worked extremely well, and most of the Polish and German populations of Chelmno (renamed Kulmhof by the Germans) knew what was happening, as is evidenced in post-war testimonies by both Poles and Germans.With this background one can return to Filip Muller. In May 1942 he and an acquaintance were thrown, as punishment, into the crematorium of Auschwitz I, to assist with the burning of bodies in the few ovens available alongside the one gas chamber. After this colossal shock, well and clearly described in the book, Muller was kept on as a worker in the gas chamber and crematorium of this first Auschwitz camp. When eventually four further gas chambers and crematoria were built at Birkenau (Auschwitz II), the huge new extermination camp a few miles away, Muller was sent there as part of the crematorium "team", the Sonderkommando. Initially there had been six or seven men in each team; as the extermination programme expanded into full working mode, team sizes increased, until there were hundreds of workers in each of the (now 5) crematoria.Filip Muller describes life and death in the gas chambers, the crematoria, the outside pits, in dispassionate language, conscious only that he has to bear witness. He describes those who worked with him, and the men who supervised the workers - mainly members of the SS whom he names - and their cruelty, occasional amiability, their drunkenness and work ethic or laziness. He writes in detail of the gassing procedures, of the means of getting corpses into ovens, and of what happened when things occasionally went wrong from the SS point of view. He doesn't hesitate to describe the horrors of the gassing of those people in the "Family Camp" who truly believed that they would be spared because they had built their own camp after arriving from Theresienstadt. He also describes how people still alive were shovelled into ovens, and how living babies were thrown into pits of fire. All this I have read before, in books by both Jews and non-Jews, but the horror is not diminished by knowing about it.Muller remained at this work until November 1944, when the gassings ceased. Members of the Sonderkommando were regularly put to death after a few months in the gas chambers, but he and a few others managed to survive.This story is told in simple language, with little emotion and no deviations from the subject. One learns very little about Filip Muller, the man, apart from his ability to work extremely hard and endure indescribable suffering, and - aside from one episode when he tried to join those being gassed - his determination to survive and give testimony to what he had seen, heard and experienced.There are a number of people frankly disbelieving of Muller's testimony. They tend to seize on details that they say do not make sense, for example that Filip Muller repeatedly got the geography of the gas chambers wrong. When a person works under tremendous pressure, fearful at every moment of losing his life, consumed by terror, he or she is not going to get geography "right." I know this from far less fearful experiences, as do other people. The one thing those of us who get terrorized have in common is that we cannot recall exact geography. Any psychologist can tell us this.Other details on which doubters seize, such as a girl still wearing a necklace when she is already in the gas chamber: Well, if the book is read with thought and clarity, the entire situation leading up to the girl still having the necklace is explained by the facts of the story.For myself, I have not one single doubt about the testimony of Filip Muller. It happened.This particular edition has been published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and I think that it could be improved upon. Original spellings are changed, for example Zyklon B becomes Zyclon B, and there are a number of other instances of Anglicisation which cause the entire work to feel unbalanced. It is difficult to understand why the publishers could not simply remain with the original German. An Index at the end of the book would be a great help, as there are countless instances when readers might like to know where they previously read any given name, and in what context. It is a pity that money appears to have been saved at the expense of more accurate history. The SS men in Muller's story were real; they existed; one would like to be able to learn more about them than the minimal details of their cruelty and criminality described in the book - an Index would help with further research. Many of them escaped after their murderous crimes; many lived to a ripe old age, and many of these did so in the USA. One would like to know...I would like to mention a few books I have read which might help others to understand that Muller's testimony is valid:"Five Chimneys" by Olga Lengyel."To Calm My Dreams" by Kazimierz Tyminski. (Lengyel and Tyminski are Catholic, i.e., not Jewish.)"Children of the Flames : Dr Josef Mengele & the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz" by Lagnado & Dekel."I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz" by Gisella Perl."A Jewish Doctor in Auschwitz : The Testimony of Sima Vaisman", by Sima Vaisman."The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting : Wannsee and the Final Solution" by Mark Roseman.There are many more books that serve to validate Filip Muller's testimony, but these are amongst the most recent I have read.

This may be the most unflinching account as it details the work inside the crematorium of Birkeneau and Auschwitz assigned to Flip Muller. His physical and psychological strengths give him an edge as he waits for uprising he has helped to organize. However due to luck, he avoids many close calls.My only criticism is a lack of an epilogue that relates what happened after his liberation. The document films Shoah, I and II include interviews with Muller and are highly recommended.

The harrowing life experience from which no human being was to survive and tell the secrets of the Nazi’s “Final Solution” this one soul clung to life amidst the most horrible tortures to come forward and tell the truth.

Amazon really needs to change the wording of their star rating. Having to put "I love it" about such a book is quite ridiculous. We aren't all 12 years old, Amazon.Consistantly harrowing reading. Told in somewhat of a dispassionate tone, macabre tale after macabre tale is told without sugar coating any of it. I found the lack of emotion made it easier to get through than I think it would have been otherwise. Clearly, Filip has been greatly affected by his experiences, but I suspect there was a large part of him that had to switch off for his own sake meaning you get a fact-based account rather than a book that may come across as containing hyperbole if effervescent language was spewn throughout.I personally believe that books like this should be required reading. Everybody should know that these atrocities happen and that genocide continues. It is only through education we may stand a chance of preventing future Hitler-esque characters emerging. Couple that with the fact that we almost owe it to those poor, doomed souls whose time on this earth was wiped so cruelly and mercilessly, it is the least we can do.I plan on visiting Auschwitz this year and am positive this book will make that experience even more worthwhile.

There was not a single thing I disliked about this book. I clung onto every page and I couldn't stop reading. I learnt so much about Auschwitz from this book... far more than I did from watching documentaries, films and visiting Auschwitz itself just last month. Hearing it straight from someone who was there really brings it home for you. The author leaves out no detail and the book is very gruesome but that's the reality of the situation these individuals had to survive.

After having visited Auschwitz I bought this book at their book shop , It is harrowing, shocking and a difficult read because its so direct and well written , It is an absolute MUST read for everyone who wants to understand what happened in this unique place , A place that was built and run run for the sole purpose of the mass extermination of an entire people on an efficient and industrial scale , and to understand what happens when evil attempts to triumph , The very fact that the author lived and found the strength to write this book makes it in my mine an absolute essential book to own

I felt it was almost a duty to learn about the Holocaust. We did not cover it at school, and I never made any previous efforts - so I bought the book, with no expectation of how I would feel reading it. Very hard to rate. I did not give it 5 stars (and felt oddly guilty) because of the sheer volume of facts crammed in. Bit overwhelmed, which reduced the emotional impact in places. The diary extracts / personal accounts hit hard though. Glad I read it, and I think it us a subject I will read more about as a result.

Excellent read, but comes with a warning... it's very graphically written... which can make it hard to read at times. If you want to know what it was REALLY like in the concentration camps, and more specifically the gas chambers... this is it!!