First published 2010
Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, prisoner A-8450, finds himself assigned to work at the Birkenau crematoria where millions perish. He witnesses the construction of these death factories, built by starving Jewish prisoners who worked through brutal winters, their blood literally staining every stone. These same prisoners would later become victims of the machinery they created with their own hands. One evening, alone with his thoughts, Nyiszli hears a scream cut short by gunfire, then the sound of a body falling. Another scream follows, another shot, another collapse. He counts seventy such sequences. When he enters the room to investigate, he discovers a scene that exceeds even his worst expectations. Nyiszli must navigate this machinery of death while trying to preserve his humanity and document what he sees. His medical training becomes both his salvation and his curse as he serves the very system designed to destroy him and his people.
Genres: holocaust, historical-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir
Vibes: dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: survival, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Birkenau, Auschwitz
Period: World War II
217 pages · Paperback · Oswiecim
Content warnings: abuse, death, gore, graphic-violence, medical-trauma, racism, torture