Five Chimneys

Rating:
Summary: A gripping account of life and death at Auschwitz
Review: 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 "heartwrenching." The early date, two years after WWII ended, ensures that the author's memories of the camp are still clear and the details very precise. Olga Lengyel studied to be a physician, and her informed analysis of the treatment given to her and her inmates make this book special. Other accounts of the Holocaust often fall short of its quality and level of detail.

Rating:
Summary: A gripping account of life and death at Auschwitz
Review: 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 "heartwrenching." The early date, two years after WWII ended, ensures that the author's memories of the camp are still clear and the details very precise. Olga Lengyel studied to be a physician, and her informed analysis of the treatment given to her and her inmates make this book special. Other accounts of the Holocaust often fall short of its quality and level of detail.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best Holocaust accounts ever written
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Our Children Who Are In Heaven.........
Review: This book was given to me by my mother-in-law. She had been given the book when she was just 17. The book was new and has been collecting dust in the attic since she was given the book. I found this dusty manuscript in a box of many books in her attic. When asked if I may read it, she told me I could have it. I could hardly wait until I could find time alone to read. When I started into the book and the warnings issued to the family, knowing that they went ignored, I had to find out how the average middle class family that was not Jewish happened into the world of torture and death. With each page turned fell a tear for those who had no reason to be there and anger over those that were supposed to be prisoners but were put above the "vermin" that made up the life of this most infamous camp. Whenever my children have a class in school that touches on the war, I pull out this aged volume and encourage them to read and learn. I have loaned this book to teachers of my childrens classes. I have read portions of this book to students when I am asked to speak in the class. But the story that most touches my heart is that of the "snowmen". I won't tell you about it. You have to get and read this book and read the whole book (which won't be hard) to learn their story. The one that couldn't be left untold. Mrs. Lengyel's heart broke the most over their story and she lived it. Yours will only be torn from out of your chest.

Rating:
Summary: Heart Reacking
Review: This book was the best thing i have read since The Dairy of Anne Frank i give so much love to this woman for the strong sence of mind she must have had to go though all that ordle.

Rating:
Summary: An account all should read
Review: This is a powerful work. I could not put it down - it is written so elegantly. To put experiences such as Ogla's on paper takes so much courage; that alone makes this book a "must read." Take some time to educate yourself about what occurred in the past to prevent it from happening in the future.

Rating:
Summary: wow
Review: this is an unbelievably touching and shocking book. it kept me reading constantly. i highly recommend this book for anyone who is just starting reading about the holocaust or is a seasoned veteran on the subject. it will leave you speechless. this book is about one of the most couragous women i have ever heard about. these people were heroes ...every one of them.

Rating:
Summary: The smallest details will shock you.
Review: 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.

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Summary: You will feel like your are right beside Olga!
Review: This is the best book on the holocaust I have ever read! I read alot on the holocaust, and it was so well written, I felt like I was standing right beside Olga! I first got interested in the holocaust after Schlinders List, which was the greatest movie ever made, OIga's story makes it seem like a fairy tale. Just incredible!

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Summary: MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN...
Review: 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 Jewish.

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.