Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers by Filip Müller

Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers Reviews

• 
  Red Haircrow

  I've visited Auschwitz. I've walked the stark grounds with a shaking feeling of anger too great to express at the sheer arrogant absurdity of it all. The practical idiotic mindset and machine which the Nazis created to perpetrate such unspeakable crimes, yet rather ordinary people allowed themselves to be manipulated into doing so and rationalized the acts. And then you have Filip, a prisoner, who with chained hands was forced to help turn the cogs for a time.
  
  I've an extensive library of Holocaust works of all kinds. Some of the most notable and controversial I have on my shelves. Personal accounts I keep separate because they are separate in my mind. All of them can be heartbreaking, and it's a grim subject and interest, but still necessary for me. Only a few, of which this is one, have I had to stop several times, close its covers and cover my face and simply weep.
  
  To name it superlative is almost a travesty. In it's sheer power of catacylsmic emotion it is not surpassed, but for me the point is not simply to read for information sake or even a shock factor: it is the depth of Filip's emotional and spiritual suffering which binds the reader to the writer. I've never read anything quite like it.
  
  There is not the eloquence of others like Primo Levi, or the almost direct request for empathy others have presented in their memoirs. Müller wrote it as he recalled. Only that. It needed nothing else. It was enough and far beyond imagining.
• 
  Steven Godin

  
  Doubt there are many more as harrowing a book as this one. Doubt there are many more as important either.
  
  And I thought the Nazis from Jean-François Steiner's book 'Treblinka' were bad enough.
  
  Enter Hauptscharführer Otto Moll at Auschwitz-Birkenau, who turned out to be just about the most evil and detestable human being I think I've ever come across.
  
  And his defense at the war crimes trial - "An order is an order!" Yeah right. As if he were told to throw babies, which were very much alive, into a pit of burning fat. Or play teasing games with his victims, which was only ever going to end one way. At least some of the other Nazi scum just got on with the job at hand, in a chilling and methodical manner. But nope, he just had to have some fun as well.
  
  Unsurprisingly Hitler gave him the War Merit Cross.
  
  In hell the devil gave him a gold star.
  
  
  
• 
  Lewis Weinstein

  brutally honest ... so very difficult to read
• 
  Anjalí

  I wouldn't say I enjoyed this book as such - I don't think one is supposed to say they enjoy reading this kind of thing - but this was a very insightful - and graphic - account of what life was like in the death camps of what the Nazi's dubbed 'The Final Solution'.
  
  I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading about the Holocaust. In fact, I think everyone should read this so that this awful stain on human history is never forgotten and more so that this is never allowed to happen again.
• 
  Kat

  I’ve read many Holocaust memoirs, all of them terrible, heart-breaking and shocking in their own way, but Eyewitness Auschwitz stands out for several other reasons.
  
  It is the story of Filip Muller, who spent more than two years in Auschwitz, and saw some of the worst things that human beings can do to each other – he worked in the gas chambers as a Sonderkommando – responsible for the cremation of thousands and thousands of his fellow Jews.
  
  What makes Eyewitness Auschwitz particularly unique is Filip’s focus – there is very little about his life before World War II, how he came to be in Auschwitz and he tells his story in a rather unemotional way. To some that may sound like it makes this is a difficult book to connect and sympathise with, but in fact I found that it made it more intense, more shocking and even more emotional for me as a reader.
  Filip joins the Sonderkommando right at the very beginning of the book – there isn’t much about his life in Auschwitz prior, but it tells a very important story. From removing and sorting the belongings of those that had just been executed, to moving bodies and finally feeding them into the crematorium, every part of his story is important – it’s the kind of story that’s incredibly difficult to read at times, but it’s also very addictive.
  
  Holocaust memoirs aren’t for every reader, but Eyewitness Auschwitz is an important book that deserves far more recognition than it gets. Filip not only lives through the terror of not knowing when he will die, but also has a part to play in the destruction of his own people and the fact that he makes it through without completely losing his sanity is a real testament to the strength of the human mind, and how compartmentalisation and suppression of traumatic events comes without even trying. It’s a survival instinct, and although at times he appears almost cold in his storytelling, it’s very much a reflection of how he survived.
  
  If you have an interest in the Holocaust, or just want to read a memoir that focus so intently on the subject matter it’s difficult to emotionally remove yourself from the story, I highly highly recommend Eyewitness Auschwitz.
• 
  Vicki

  I have an interest in the Holocaust for many years. I'm not Jewish, I'm not German, I don't know anyone who was in the concentration camps but I have such a desire to read accounts of that time. I always think the stories I read will be a disappointment because I keep thinking the books and memoirs I read will be repetitive, but they never are. And this one was no different. It had a new perspective on the atrocities of Auschwitz.
  
  Filip Muller is the author of this personal memoir, a man who spent approximately 2 years, 7 months, in Auschwitz. He becomes part of the Sonderkommando when he arrives and continues throughout. He's not someone who "gladly" helped with the process, execution and disposal of 1000's of Jews, but he is someone who did so. It is an emotional read because I can't read anything of this nature and not reflect on the human need for survival, how one human being can commit such horrible acts on other humans as the Germans did, and I believe that it's important to remember such events so we can look for signs that these types of things are happening in the world and be a part of (hopefully) preventing them and not being blinded to horrific history in the making.
• 
  Pramodya

  Breath...
  ok. Whatever that I'm going to say will not do this book any justice. So I'm not gonna over do it. But let me just say.. this is probably THE most eye-opening, heart shattering, MOST shocking, BRUTAL, HORRENDOUSLY truthful book I have ever read in my life. It hit me to the core like nothing has ever done before.
  I am quite honestly at a loss for words. Fillip Muller was a Slovakian jew who was transported to Auschwitz like millions of others who dreamt their lives may become better by moving on to a new place that was promised as bring a better future for all of them. No one in their minds ever suspected that not only were they going to a concentration camp, but THE concentration camp that undertook the job of extermination of MILLIONS and MILLIONS of jews around Europe.
  Its not just this act that will freeze you or numb your mind to a stage of shock, but the daily atrocities and tortures, activities the prisoners were put under. The writer was a 'Sonderkomando', Prisoners who were 'chosen' for the specific duties of disposing the hundreds of thousands of corpses of their fellow countrymen. These prisoners were the only ones who were allowed to enter in on the secret ongoings of the death factories and gas chambers. Due to the fact that these prisoners were in on their deeply guarded horrible secrets, these 'sonderkomandos' were also killed from time to time to safeguard that secret. Fillip, due to a miracle survived for three years and lived to tell this tale to the rest of the world.
  I was left to wonder So many time.. HOW can humans become even worse than animals. so monstrous themselves to their fellow human beings. I had to keep my book down in many occasions, to take in a few breaths or to ponder over what just happened in that chapter. It was too much to take in sometimes.
  I am glad that I read this book because it is a necessary chapter in history that all of us SHOULD know and also getting to see the strength and will of some people at the face of adversity and horrible circumstances was simply.. amazing. I am also not glad in way because it made me see the darkest parts of the human minds and their capability of sadistic, horrifying actions.
  But as a last note.. This book will FOREVER have an important, cherished place in my heart. And thank you to Fillip Muller to putting all his horrifying experiences in writing. As the saying goes........'HISTORY IS FOR HUMAN KNOWLEDGE... THE ONLY CLUE TO WHAT MAN CAN DO IS WHAT MAN HAS DONE. THE VALUE OF HISTORY THEN, IS THAT IT TEACHES US WHAT MAN HAS DONE AND THUS WHAT MAN IS.'
• 
  Neva

  Прочетох до стр. 49 и се поболях. Физически ми е невъзможно да продължа, психическото избухна някъде на третата страница и не остана. Изключително важно свидетелство от страдалец в ада – аушвицките газови камери и крематориуми. Главата не го побира.
  
  „Hitler and his henchmen had never made a secret of their attitude to the Jews nor of their avowed intention to exterminate them like vermin. The whole world knew it, and knowing it, it remained silent – was not their silence equivalent to consent?“
• 
  Lori Anderson

  I've mentioned this many times -- I like to read Holocaust and WWII memoirs because they show the beauty of man overcoming the ugly.
  
  Well, this book is indeed about the ugly -- the ugliest I've ever read.
  
  This is an unprecedented memoir of a man who ends up being a prisoner at Aushwitz as a crematorium worker. He managed to smuggle out plans of the crematoria and the camps and seeing them in detail is more than sobering. He also gives detailed, intense commentary on exactly what went on in selections, details that many could never even dream of or imagine.
  
  He talks about the progression of extermination of Jews -- how the SS figured out they needed the prisoners to undress BEFORE being gassed so as to save their clothing -- previously, prisoners had to undress every corpse. He explains the trickery the SS used, implementing the crematorium workers to fool the prisoners into thinking they really WERE going to have a shower and return to get their clothes back. He speaks about digging enormous ditches and how the SS burned bodies in these pits when the chimneys needed repair.
  
  This is not an easy book to read.
  
  However, it's a necessary book to be in the world, because no one should ever forget how quickly and easily so many people can die. It's also a testament to how quickly humans can turn into demons when a leader paves the way for them.
  
  
  Lori Anderson
  
  
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• 
  Ellie Midwood

  In his candid and personal account, Filip Müller offers the reader a glimpse into the life of not only an Auschwitz prisoner but a member of a crematoria Sonderkommando, members of which had to face death daily and on numerous occasions. After being deported to Auschwitz in 1942, Müller soon finds himself manning the very first gassing facility and, later, crematoria and with chilling honesty and openness recounts the actions of the SS, who were probing their way into making Auschwitz into a veritable death factory.
  It’s impossible to imagine the emotional pain Müller suffered, undressing the still-warm bodies right after gassings and burning them in the open pits while Auschwitz officials were trying to develop “a more efficient method” to take human lives and conceal the evidence of their crimes. He never paints himself as a victim; only explains what he had to do to stay alive, let it be getting on the right side of the corrupted SS guards or “organizing” things for himself and his friends even though it meant stealing them from the recently gassed victims. The daily life of the camp, the inner workings of the crematoria Sonderkommando, camp resistance and comradery, and even brave individual actions of a few Jews who refused to go into the gas chamber without fighting - all this is presented extremely vividly in this brilliantly written memoir. I really can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you’re interested in the history of the Holocaust, it definitely should be on your must-read list.
  
• 
  Orsolya

  Despite all of the documentation, imagery and first-hand accounts through the eyes of survivors; the atrocities of the Hell-on-earth known as the Holocaust are still mind-bogglingly difficult to comprehend. It is almost unfathomable to imagine how humans could treat their fellow man in the ways the Nazis treated millions of people. As a Jewish descendent of the Holocaust (my grandfather survived Buchenwald concentration camp); I suffer from relational PTSD (yes, it is an actual, diagnosable thing) but I must know what my people endured. In fact EVERYONE must, Jewish or not. Filip Muller was also a survivor of the Holocaust and spent three years as a prisoner working the crematorium ovens at both Auschwitz and Birkenau having to basically aid in the deaths of his own people. Muller’s account is not only that of his own personal experience; but of the detailed inner-workings of Auschwitz in the riveting piece, “Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers”.
  
  In the foreword to “Eyewitness Auschwitz”, Yenuda Bauer – Professor and Director, International Center for Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem- addresses readers stressing the importance of Muller’s writing as it is not just a survivor’s recap but exposes the inner echelon of Auschwitz’s crematorium, gas chambers and brutal murders. “Eyewitness Auschwitz” is rather a witness-stand affidavit than a simple memoir. Bauer also warns readers that “Eyewitness Auschwitz” is not a fictional tale, literary masterpiece or art offering but a forward portrait and insider peek. Well, Bauer is wrong. VERY wrong.
  
  “Eyewitness Auschwitz” is in fact a masterpiece. It is MORE than a masterpiece: it is a riveting, real, mind-blowing, heartbreakingly crucial report. Readers will not only experience Muller’s time as a concentration camp prisoner through his eyes but will feel it inside their own souls. Your heart beats faster, you ache, you cry, you are numbed… you are there. “Eyewitness Auschwitz” transports readers with poignant, direct language – nothing is held back- but with a beautiful literary, descriptive tongue that is as vivid as the noonday sun.
  
  Readers walk alongside Muller during his time at Auschwitz, as he escapes death and is sent to work in the crematorium, his ups and downs, his attempt at ending his own life, his will to fight alongside the Resistance and the eventual liberation of the camps. “Eyewitness Auschwitz” is not the typical Holocaust memoir as the perspective is fresh with Muller literally opening the doors to Aushwitz’s crematoriums and introducing readers to the Nazis who ran them. The detail is staggering and almost too much to handle, emotionally: readers will find themselves needing to catch their breath and walk away from the book, momentarily.
  
  Being that “Eyewitness Auschwitz” is not a standard memoir; this means that Muller opted against an overly sentimental perspective and therefore there is an absence of emotional analysis, full-psyche dive and over-romanticizing. Readers are left with some unanswered questions and the desiring to know Mueller’s personal thoughts and opinions. Yet, this doesn’t devalue the merit or strength of “Eyewitness Auschwitz” and Muller still managers to allow readers into his personal space.
  
  There are moments in Muller’s retelling that feel slightly contrived and almost “too perfect” and “at the right time and place”. However, who are we to question the events and perhaps Muller’s experience truly was that extraordinary. Equally, Bauer’s foreword states that some of Muller’s statistics have been since proven to be inaccurate and suggests to verify with more recent texts. It would be useful if newer publications/translations of “Eyewitness Auschwitz” had an epilogue noting Muller’s imprecise statements.
  
  Expanding on this, Muller never truly discourses on how he felt about escaping death but seeing and handling the corpses of his fellow Jews all day, everyday; coming off as callous and borderline sociopathological. However, this is probably Muller’s way of coping with the trauma and is part of his avoidance tactics/PTSD. Sadly, readers never learn why the Nazis spared Muller’s life even as the Red Army was kilometers away but obviously Muller didn’t know the reasoning, himself.
  
  Muller maintains an engaging and captivating, almost documentary-esque tone throughout “Eyewitness Auschwitz” knowing the exact amount of historical detail ratio to keep readers constantly experiencing emotive responses.
  
  The conclusion of “Eyewitness Auschwitz” doesn’t feel as consuming as the former portions leading up to the liberation climax. Muller lost some steam and was seemingly unsure how to wrap up his life story. Despite this weaker ending, “Eyewitness Auschwitz” manages to close in a loud-enough way.
  
  “Eyewitness Auschwitz” is supplemented with diagrams and descriptive keys of the Auschwitz camps and the crematoriums, adding to the overall value of the text.
  
  No amount of words or reviews can do “Eyewitness Auschwitz” proper justice. Muller’s experience/retelling is heart wrenching, critical and is a true insider’s look at the Nazi killing machine. “Eyewitness Auschwitz” is both educational and serves as an expose on the Holocaust but mankind, in general (on a psychological level). This super important account is suggested for EVERYONE; especially those interested in WWII and those readers of the Jewish faith.
• 
  Mohana Sidhaarth

  I visited Auschwitz a few weeks ago. The memorial site is haunting and it was a humbling experience to stand on the spot where hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Killed for no reason. It is a place of unspeakable evil and cunning. People being "exterminated" with brutal efficiency. Hearing about the conditions in the camp and seeing the remains of the camp, the pictures and some of the remains of people (ashes, bones, hair and personal belongings ) drove home the gravity of the situation in these camps. I also realized how lucky we are to live in times of peace in cities and countries were we can go about our lives without having to fear about most things. (At least for now.)
  
  It is impossible to visit Auschwitz and not feel moved, confused and disturbed. I still struggle to understand why all these people had to be killed. Why would anyone go to such lengths to almost eliminate an entire race? It doesn't make any sense. I felt compelled to learn more about Auschwitz. I felt compelled to read and find the reason for all this hatred and cruelty.
  
  Eyewitness Auschwitz, the first of many books that I will be reading on the holocaust and the war, gives a first hand account of the experience of one prisoner who was in Auschwitz for three years. It is a painful story that has to be read (and if possible, seen through a visit to Auschwitz,) to believe. Filip Muller's life in the camp, his accounts of the gas chambers and the way Jews, political prisioners and POWs were systematically exterminated is very difficult to accept unless you have seen the actual gas chambers and the camp in person.
  
  A gripping account the struggles of Jews and prisoners in the camp and an insight into the lives of the Sonderkommandos, the prisoners who worked these crematoriums, Eyewitness Auschwitz is a must read for everyone. Puts a lot of things in perspective and might just nudge us to appreciate our present conditions and situation and live a better and peaceful life. But more than that, I believe these accounts are a reminder to all of us of the terrible acts that have been perpetuated in the name of religion, race and war and a reminder that it doesn't take a lot to push us beyond the edge.
• 
  Ray

  This is the memoire of one of the few surviving members of the Sondercommando from Auchwitz. The Sondercommando were the workers who did the dirty work in the industrialised death factories. The book tells in distressing detail how the camps worked and the inhumane "work" that the author was forced to carry out. It is an important historical record of terrible times.
• 
  Grace

  I liked this book as much as it is possible to like a book that centers around the mass extermination of an entire race of people. Filip Muller's memoir of his three year imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp recreates the vivid details of the life of a young man forced to assist in the mass murders of thousands of Jews in order to stay alive.
  
  Muller works in the crematorium - picking up the clothes left behind by people who thought they were going to the showers, but were really going to the gas chambers; "organizing" the valuables left behind by the dead, which would be used by the Nazis or traded by the prisoners for food, tobacco, and weapons; dragging the bodies out of the gas chambers; loading them into the ovens, and stoking the bodies to make sure they burned efficiently and in a timely manner. When the crematoriums were not enough, he and other prisoners were forced to dig fire pits in the yard behind the crematoriums.
  
  He recalls he day-to-day existence, the thousands and thousands of deaths in a matter of fact tone that is slightly devoid of emotion. I'm sure that the atrocities he witnessed - women forced to the edge of the pits, forced to watched the burning bodies turn into ash, and then shot in the base of the neck, falling face first into the flames below; babies, still alive, thrown into the pails of human fat that had burned off of the bodies and left to die, and hearing the screams of people inside the gas chambers, desperately pleading to be let out, to live, left a lasting impression on him even more profound than his book left on me. The tone and slight lack of emotion allow the stark reality of the horrors stand out. The reader doesn't have the author's feelings to rely on, but is given the chance to feel the events as if he or she was there in the changing room of crematorium 5 along with a truckload of people from a liquidated ghetto or from a random selection at the concentration camp.
  
  The one thought that kept racing through my mind as I read was, "What is it like to know that you are going to die in one of the most inhumane ways possible?" The overwhelming sense of dread and disbelief I felt every time a group of people were led into the changing room is nothing compared to what those people must have felt, going to their death naked, herded like cattle, then pillaged for everything of value, right down to their gold teeth and the women's long hair, and then burnt, the ashes dumped into a nearby river.
  
  Even though this book is graphic and unsettling (a major understatement, I know), I feel that it is an important book to read and reflect upon. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the Holocaust, Jewish studies, or to someone who wants to learn about the dark parts of humanity's past in order to ensure that they do not repeat themselves.
• 
  Amy

  This is not the most well-written WWII/Holocaust memoir, but it may be the most powerful. Its power lies in just how mundane Filip makes it all sound. Day after day after day of doing the same horrific thing - killing thousands of people, removing their hair, gold teeth and clothes, and incinerating them. He explains how the Nazis worked out the best ratio of corpses to feed into a stove at any one time, and how the crematory pits were designed to best use human fat as fuel..... Like it was all so run of the mill and not completely, mind-bendingly horrible. We all have read about how people were led into the gas chambers - about how they were told "go take a shower"; about the staggering numbers of people killed; what you don't realize is the sheer scale of it all - how the killing occurred nightly, and the ovens ran non-stop. *that* is what this book does. The sheer scale of it all. The relentlessness of it all.....
• 
  Megan

  This is a matter-of-fact though thought-provoking book about the horrors of Auschwitz. Even having been there and seen the inhumanity of it all myself, it is still hard to visualise what it would have been like to live through it. Müller's blunt writing style almost numbs you to what he describes and it caused me to think about what leads men and women to commit such evils. We are not born to hate but taught to do so. This book is a prime lesson that something like the Holocaust must never happen again. It is something that will stay with me for a long time. 5 stars.
• 
  Abby

  Even knowing what kind of book I was getting into, I was not prepared for how difficult of a read this was. After what this man went through to expose the atrocities in Auschwitz, I think everyone needs to read his book.
• 
  sparrow

  (Not so much 'loved it', but star rating relates to importance and relevance.)
• 
  Jakub Szestowicki

  Najbardziej przerażająca książka, jaką przeczytałem w życiu
• 
  Cheri

  I haven't read this book in at least 10 years, but it has always stuck with me. I've recommended it to numerous people. I don't feel I can say too much here since it's been so long since I've read it, but I want to urge others to experience Filip Muller's story for themselves. It is a real eye opener. Although it will haunt you, I think it's important that the atrocities of the Nazi regime are not forgotten so they are not repeated.
• 
  David

  An excruciatingly tough read, that I hesitate to say that I "liked." But that goes for any book that delves into horrors of the Holocaust, particularly so for works like this one that are told by the people who lived through it.
• 
  Shelley

  Even for a seasoned Holocaust reader, this account is profoundly painful. But should be required reading . . .
  
• 
  Ken Hodgson

  A difficult book to read. Horror is piled upon horror until in a strange kind of way I became almost immune to it as the writer had too to survive
• 
  Amanda

  Obviously, very dark but I'm glad I read it. I saw an interview with the author, Filip Muller, in the documentary 'Shoah'.