[.ca] Five Chimneys: A Woman's True Story of Auschwitz (ISBN 0897333764)

Keep the truth alive--everywhere we look are others:
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.

wow:
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.

The terrible sadness behind all Holocaust Books::
The two best books about Auschwitz is this one, Five Chimneys, and Phillip Mullers book about working in the crematoriums. Both are essential reads on the journey to better Holocaust Understanding. These two ex-prisoners were in prominent positions, they had the intelligence to see and understand and to record for posterity what was going on, and they both observed this infamous camps inner workings in great detail. Five Chimneys is the classic book of the two, and its a book that you can't forget easily. You want to forget it - but you can't, you feel guilty for having it in the house and feel embarrassed if people see it, and you wonder if people think your strange, or into the world of torture and dungeons and whipping bound captives - because your reading it so avidly. So you throw it away, then you feel guilty for being so stupid, and the next time you see it on sale you buy another copy, because you identify with these people, you want to protect them, to say don't board that train, don't go down that street, and even worse there sad pre-war photos of this-is-us-as-we-once-where haunt you forever. Eventually this book turns YOU into a prisoner, you want revenge, your pleased that Hitler, Himmler, Goebells and Goering, the top 4 Nazis killed themselves with Cyanide, it seems only fitting and right, but was it? I would have liked to have seen these four gangsters \oas in Al Capone and Murder Incorporated\c to be walked barefooted from Berlin to Warsaw, and hung in the Ghetto Square wearing their medals and self-clothed in their pompous military uniforms, then left to rot for the people of Poland to see and jeer. I wanted them to see defeat for themselves as they walked into Poland and stood on the scaffold in Warsaw. And this is what Five Chimneys does to you, you become an hero and a victim, and you don't have to be Jewish to suffer. I would like to see each year a wood pole erected outside every government building with a Yellow Star on it, with the words "We are truly sorry" written beneath the Star. Maybe one day they will be a 6th chimey and it will be for us, unless that is we learn the great lessons contained inside this book? \oFootnote, Auschwitz had five crematoriums with 5 chimneys hence the title\c Do you want a 6th chimney in your neighbourhood?

Good but quite sickening:
This poor woman, who saved herself by convincing a selection doctor that the captive women need a health clinic, saved many lives as she worked in the underground of the concentration camp. She details the sick "experiments" that took place there and how she cared for its poor victims if they were returned to the barracks. She also talks how she unknowningly sent her mother and older son to the "left" during the initial off train selection and physically escaped one selection group herself. She even details how she had to commit murders in order to save lives (hint: Auschwitz did not have a materinity ward). There are many details here about the holocaust. This book, though with so many movies now many events are familar, really attaches names to these occurances and makes it personal. I read this in one sitting and I don't want to read another book on the subject again. It was so sick what happened to millions of people, what they were forced to participate in, and yet mass mutilations and murder around the globe still take place.

Difficlt to read but should be read:
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.