Rating: 
Summary: You can't put it down!!
Review: I just got this book two days ago and finished reading it last night!!! For anyone with interest in learning about this awful era in the 20th century, Read this! Being jewish, I was disappointed in the beginning that it was told from an Agnostic(no particular deominations) aspect, but i kept on going and I'm so glad i did!! This book is comparable to Elie Wiesel's "NIGHT"It is worth your time!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Keep the truth alive--everywhere we look are others
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Keep the truth alive--everywhere we look are others
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Sad, deep and moving...
Review: It is a story of courage, survival, strength and dedication. It is sad and moving... Everyone should read it just so the great evil of Nazi Germany would not be forgotten. We can not allow it to happen again. This book shows just a small chapter in the life of a woman in the concentration camp. It shows how regular everyday actions such as a drink of water could get you killed. It shows brutal and inhuman side of the guards. It shows how one person could help hundreds and hundreds of people and save them from death. Now why not 5 stars if this book is so great? Well... This book is an account of the person deeply affected by the events in the concentration camp (and rightfully so), but this leads to inconsistencies and little of false information being passed to the reader. Again this was not done intentionally. Every word written about life and torture is absolutely true but information about camp structure and chain of command is slightly distorted. But at the end it is a sad story that should be read and remembered.
Rating:
Summary: FIVE STARS FOR "FIVE CHIMNEYS" - A MUST READ!!
Review: Olga Lengyel has paid the highest price for the information she gives us all in Five Chimneys. She was there..in Auschwitz - Birkenau. What was her crime? Indeed, what was anyone's crime, to have one's life taken away from them and labelled an Enemy of the Third Reich. Her chilling testimony grips you immediately and holds your attention all the way through. Only one who was a prisoner of the infamous "Death Camps" will truly know what it was like to live the horrors shared in Five Chimneys. Everyone should read this book. Read it slowly, try to picture in your mind the sights Olga describes. Even doing so, one could never imagine the relentless fear of being 'selected' at any time without notice. No intelligent reader will feel unaffected after reading Five Chimneys. In fact one can easily see the clear message given to all of us: "All Life is Precious and none can be replaced."
Rating:
Summary: The best of holocaust literature..
Review: Olga Lengyel's 'Five Chimneys' is probably the most descriptive and compehensive book written on Auschwitz-Birkenau from a survivor's point of view. Many authors have written outstanding books on this subject but Lengyel's is the most moving and detailed of those books. The story is outlined by other reviewers here so I won;t get into that but simply say read it, it deserves it's 5 star rating.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping From Beginning To End.
Review: 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'.
Rating:
Summary: How Did They Survive?
Review: Searingly, brutally honest, "Five Chimneys" takes us on a journey through Auschwitz that refuses to let us forget the horrors that a generation faced there. Olga Lengyel was a respected woman surgeon in her European home city along with her husband. The Nazi threat hung around them, but Olga and the rest of her family never realized the devastation it would bring to them. Then Olga's husband, Dr. Miklos Lengyel (then a proud hospital surpervisor)is called to be deported by the Nazis. The Nazis tell the families of those awaiting deportataion that they "may come", too. So Olga, her husband, her two young sons, and her elderly parents board a cattle car, whose then-unknown destination turns out to be Auschwitz. It is there, on a cattle car, where 96 people crowd into a space meant for 8 horses and Olga performs a stomach pumping on a woman who attempts suicide, that Lengyel's "6th sense" tells her there is worse to come. And there certainly is. Shocked by the naked, starving prisoners, Olga remembers thinking, "Who are these women? What crime have they committed...they are abnormal, that is why they are isolated." Knowing nothing of the notorious "selection" system, she sends her sons to be "cared" for by her parents, never knowing that the "care" given by the Nazis was the gas chambers and the crematorium. Surrounded by horror, defeat, despair, humiliation, starvation, and desparate bargains to avoid death, Olga perseveres. She describes her feelings of helplessness working at the camp's hospital, where water is scarce and anesthetic cannot be found, she tells us explicitly of her suffering at the hands of her less-than-human masters, and the utter despair that filled her life...in short what it meant to be a prisoner at Auschwitz. The few slow parts in the autobiography are no excuse not to read this unforgettable account of life in Auschwitz. We must never forget the tragedy and needless deaths of that time, and "Five Chimneys" certainly proves that point.
Rating:
Summary: Difficlt to read but should be read
Review: The cold truth comes out in this book. How she survived (among others) is still a mystery of human spirit. Excellent account of the holocaust. The author brings up the important point that not only Jews were victims, people from many lands and religions suffered, even the Germans.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible story of strength and courage
Review: This book was amazing...I couldn't put it down, and finished it within 2 days. This woman's story of life in Auschwitz is so moving, it literally brought me to tears. The guilt this poor woman lived with, bearing the guilt that she killed her whole family, it heartbreaking. The sheer strength she showed is inspiring. A def. must read for anyone interested in life in the horrible concentration camps during WW2.
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