I Survived Hitler’s Ovens (Five Chimneys) – The Uncensored Truth – The Diary of a Jewish Doctor Who Escaped ...

I Survived Hitler’s Ovens (Five Chimneys) – The Uncensored Truth – The Diary of a Jewish Doctor Who Escaped Deportation to the Gas Chambers in Auschwitz. United States, 1947 – First English Edition

"I Survived Hitler ovens (Five Chimneys) - The uncensored truth - A picture of utter hell...Birkenau had four large cremation furnaces for prisoners. Ashes became fertilizer...", By the Hungarian Jewish prisoner Olga Lengyel - "Complete and Unabridged" - Published by The Ziff Davis Publishing, New York, 1947 – First Uncensored English Edition. One of the Most Influential Books in Shaping Public Awareness of the Holocaust.

"This book may shock you. It tells, with raw honesty and without compromise, one of the most horrifying true stories of all time. It is the intimate, day-by-day account of a beautiful woman who survived the nightmare horror of Auschwitz and Birkenau, where, day and night, without pause, five burning chimneys spewed forth the stench of burning flesh—among them, the author's own parents and two children! This is the documented, firsthand chronicle of organized sadism, systematic cruelty, personal humiliation beyond belief, monstrous depravity, and mass slaughter—all of which were the deliberate and calculated products of the twisted philosophy of the ‘Master Race.’ Olga Lengyel survived only because, as the wife of a respected surgeon, she was deemed useful in the ‘hospital’ of the women’s camp. She witnessed the infamous ‘scientific experiments’ performed on living human beings. She saw, day after day, the notorious Josef Kramer, ‘The Beast of Belsen, ’ and his sadistic blonde companion, Irma Grese. She endured, marked forever with the scars and the tattooed number of her captivity—yet she emerged with a self-imposed mission: to bring to the world the full truth of what the ideology of a ‘Master Race’ can lead to. This is a harrowing—yet essential—reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in human civilization, a tragedy that could happen again in any nation plagued by dictators and intolerance." (From the publisher's introduction.).

One of the First Publications to Describe the Atrocities of the Nazi Extermination Camps in an Uncensored Manner, Particularly Auschwitz-Birkenau. Olga Lengyel (born 1908) was a Hungarian-Jewish doctor who worked as an assistant to her husband at the "Dr. Lengyel Hospital" in Transylvania. In 1944, she and her husband were arrested by the Gestapo and forced onto a cattle car bound for Berlin along with about a hundred others, most of them Jewish doctors. After a week of a nightmarish journey, during which many passengers perished from suffocation and overcrowding, she and her family arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon exiting the train cars, Olga, her mother, and her son were separated from her husband and father—in reality, she would be the only survivor of her entire family. Thus began her ordeal of torment in Auschwitz, which would last almost until the war’s end. On her first day in the camp, Olga underwent an invasive, excruciating "examination" along with other women. Her hair was shaved, and she was whipped for not responding quickly enough to a Nazi officer's questions. Because she was a doctor, she soon became a regular witness to the selections conducted by Josef Mengele and Irma Grese. Olga described Mengele’s chilling composure as he sent Jews to their deaths: "There was a certain wildness in Mengele’s eyes that made one uneasy. During the selections, he did not utter a word. He simply sat and whistled to himself while pointing his thumb either right or left, deciding the fate of those before him. Although he made decisions that meant extermination, he remained smug and pleasant as could be." She recounted the final moments of those sentenced to death: "The condemned men and women were led toward the main entrance. There, a truck awaited to transport them to the gas chambers. When the death facilities were overcrowded, they were sent to special barracks or latrines, where they waited for hours, sometimes days, until their turn came for gassing. Everything was done in an orderly fashion, without an ounce of compassion from our commanders." Olga herself was once sent to the gas chambers but managed to escape while standing in the death row, waiting to board the truck bound for the gas chambers. She picked up a long stick from the ground, using it to give herself an air of authority over the other condemned women. This act caused the officer loading prisoners onto the truck to overlook her, allowing her to remain behind and escape death.

The most horrifying part of the book is the chapters in which Olga describes the industrialized death machinery inside the camp. Because she was a doctor assigned to transporting corpses to the "dead room, " she was granted access to the most nightmarish areas of the gas chambers. Olga details the extermination process step by step—the transport of the condemned to their deaths, the plundering of their clothing and belongings, the exact dimensions of the chimneys, the Nazis’ use of Zyklon B gas, and the transport of bodies to the crematoria (many of whom were still alive after surviving the gassing process). She describes how the crematorium furnaces were ignited daily, providing meticulous details about their construction, the daily incineration rate, and how corpses were transported to the mass graves: "Three hundred and sixty bodies every half-hour—that was all the time it took to reduce human flesh to ashes. That meant 720 bodies per hour, or 17,280 corpses in a 24-hour shift. And the furnaces, in their murderous efficiency, operated day and night." 

She also details the work of the Sonderkommando responsible for burning the corpses, along with precise data on the number of trains arriving at Auschwitz, the number of Jews on each train, and the extermination process in meticulous detail. Olga even witnessed a delegation of SS officers who arrived at the camp to observe the extermination process in action.

She describes her "role" in transporting corpses to the mortuary: *"But inhumanity was the natural order of things in Birkenau. At the entrance to the mortuary, we laid down the stretcher and dragged the bodies inside. We simply added them to the heap of the dead. We were drenched in sweat but did not dare wipe our faces with our contaminated hands. Of all the horrific tasks I had to perform, this one left me with the most harrowing memories. I refuse to go into further detail about how we were forced to trample over piles of rotting corpses, many of whom had died from horrifying diseases. I still wonder where I found the strength to continue after such experiences. I did not even faint, as so many of my comrades did."*

The English edition before us is uncensored. Words cannot adequately convey the terrifying passages contained in this book. Olga survived in the camp until its liberation by the Allies. After the war, she was determined to document her horrific experiences, to expose the truth of the Nazi atrocities and serve as a living testament to what had occurred. The book became one of the most influential works in shaping public awareness of the Holocaust. It was first published in French under the title "Five Chimneys" in 1946. The first English edition, presented here, was published in 1947. After the war, Lengyel emigrated to the United States, where she founded the Memorial Library at New York University. Her mission was to educate future generations about the Holocaust and other genocides, emphasizing the importance of human rights. Olga passed away from cancer in New York on April 15, 2001, at the age of 92.

At the beginning of the book, a printed letter of greeting from Albert Einstein appears. On the following page, there is a photograph of the brutal female guard Lubaur from the Bergen-Belsen camp, with the chilling caption:"She was even more cruel than the men."

189 [1] pages. Minor crack in the binding. Good condition.