Analysis of Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli

Everyone who has taken a history course that goes through the 20th century knows about the atrocities performed in Nazi Germany; 11 million people exterminated and countless others put into concentration camps with unimaginable conditions. But most people do not try to explain how the German soldiers could do these things to other human beings. Primo Levi in his book Survival in Auschwitz attempts to answer this question. He begins by explaining the physical and psychological transformation of the prisoners and how that enabled the Germans to see the prisoners as inhuman and therefore oppress-able. Levi believes that the Germans treated the Jewish prisoners horrendously because of the prisoner’s

What would it do to a person to go to a concentration camp, see the horrible things, and come out alive? This book, Night, is about Eliezer Wiesel, who is both the main character and the author. Elie’s book is a memorial about his experience in Hitler’s concentration camps, what he went through, and how he survived. This paper is going to be about Eliezer’s horrific experience and the ways that it changed him.

When looking at the holocaust, it is widely known the devastation and pain that was caused by the Nazis; however when inspecting the holocaust on a deeper level, it is evident that the Jews were exposed to unimaginable treatment and experimentation often overlooked in history discussions. When looking at “Night”, Elie Wiesel was helped by the doctors in the camp when his foot was severely infected; although this is not the experience he had, many Jews were mistreated and even killed by the doctors. Many Nazi doctors that were assigned to Jewish patients were later found to have exposed the patients to horrific medical experiments and unnecessary treatments that commonly led to their death.

After World War II, many people survived physically, but were killed off psychologically by the mental torture of the Nazis. Not only did these prisoners ache from physical torment, but they also suffered from intellectual abuse for decades following the concentration camps and still recollect their inhumane experience during the 1940s. The Nazis completed many different actions to incapacitate the prisoners psychologically, such as taking away their identities, making them feel like animals, and giving them an incredulous amount of false hope before the concentration camps were put into place. Elie Wiesel’s Night documents his experience, mentally and physically, from the holocaust and all of the suffering he went through. In Night, Wiesel

Elie Wiesel talks about his experiences he encountered at the concentration camps during World War II in his novel Night. Under Hitler's command, the Nazis rounded up Elie and his family. They were taken from their home town Sighet and was put into the ghetto. Then, they were put onto a train and transported to Auschwitz. Their experience in the concentration camps changed the Jews’ attitudes, personalities, and behaviors.

SS officers in the concentration camp treated the Jews harshly. In these camps the Jews forgot how to function normally. They would do anything to survive. One of the most vivid scenes in the memoir is when Wiesel and his father arrive at Auschwitz. In the camp, guards strip them of their clothes and brutally wash them.

While Elie Wiesel is surely right in his statement, it is not the job of only holocaust survivors, but of all people, to make sure that the horror of the Holocaust are never forgotten. One part of the Holocaust, however, is often overlooked by the general public; The Nazi Medical experiments conducted on the prisoners of the concentration camps. Acknowledging the atrocity of these experiments,

“Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled.” Elie Wiesel was a young boy, only 15 years of age, when he encountered the tortures of the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz. Another Auschwitz survivor, Susan Pollack, experienced the horrors of her family being taken away right before her eyes (Connolly) .The life stories of Elie Wiesel and Susan Pollack are two examples showing the graveness of the mass butchery and abuse the Auschwitz prisoners endured, therefore portraying their immense joy when they were liberated by the Soviet soldiers on January 27,1945 (Wiesel 92).

Between 1939 and 1945, Germany partook in the Holocaust, the systematic elimination of the Jewish race, resulting in the deaths of approximately 6 million Jews and two thirds of the European Jewish population being eradicated . Led by Adolf Hitler and the Schutzstaffel, these killings took place in death camps placed in Poland, the biggest one being Auschwitz-Birkenau. Approximately 1.5 million Jews were killed at Auschwitz and it was almost impossible to escape. However, some Jews survived as they were forced into hard labour until the end of World War II. One of these survivors was Eliezer ‘Elie’ Wiesel, who documented his experiences of the Holocaust in his memoir “Night” . His experiences and opinion contribute to the overall historical narrative of the Holocaust genocide through the recollection of events as well as first-person encounters. “Night” is renowned as the first piece of Holocaust literature which is majorly conformant with other sources and recounts, depicting an almost identical sequence of events which indicates accurate and reliable inferences and deductions from historians. Thus Elie Wiesel’s experience reflects the wider background of Holocaust survivors.

During World War II Nazi Doctors played a key role in the mass genocide of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and those who were mentally and physically handicapped. The primary motivations of the Nazi doctors were most likely provoked by fear and safety at the cost of the cleansing the Aryan race of those who were considered impure. Motivations including peer-pressure and self-preservation are very likely to have increased the ability for the Nazi doctors to ignore one of the most basic components of moral and ethical code (do not kill others), as well as being able to ignore the Hippocratic oath all doctors swear by, to experiment on the poor dying bodies of the victims of the Holocaust. In order to murder thousands of Jews, Gypsies, and those who

Some say Hirsch is a man without fear" (Iturbe 12). Mengle is a very powerful German that can destroy anyone that annoys him. Hirsch is so brave to hold a conversation with Dr. Death because if he says anything Mengle does not want to hear, he could get put down. Hirsch has proven to be one of the bravest this Jews in Auschwitz. He acts as a role model for the children and helps to keep them safe and

When I read, I prefer to read books with a lot of surprising events occurring that will keep me interested. For the most part, this book did. In this book, The Dentist of Auschwitz, a man by the name of Bronek Jakubowicz, who was also the author, tells how he lived through and survived the holocaust. He faces things no human should have to go through. He witnessed only abuse and death for around 5 years.

This section was the final answer to what I have been wondering since the beginning: Does Doctor Nyiszli escape from Auschwitz? The answer is unfortunately no, at least not in this section. I am aware that Nyiszli eventually will get out of Auschwitz, so it is only a matter of time until his freedom comes. There are other questions that have arisen since I have read this section. Why did Nyiszli show emotion to Mengele?

Josef Mengele is a name that has become synonymous with evil in more ways than one. In addition to his highly visible and significant role in Hitler’s homicidal reign of horror, he was also involved in many medical experiments. He was then arrested in the year of 1946 for the murder of over a thousand innocent human beings, including children at the Death Camp Auschwitz. Despite people’s wishes for him to stay imprisoned, he was later released in the same year he was imprisoned for unknown circumstances. This caused an investigation to follow later on as to why Dr. Mengele was roaming around free without any punishment.

Throughout the Holocaust Years, and shortly afterwards, there was a man that struck fear in the people imprisoned in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp – “the Angel of Death”. He was a man who showed up for selections with a demeanor that made one think he was handsome and debonair yet, one could not possibly think of the monstrosities that he committed during World War II. Even more disturbing is that “wherever he sprang up, Death spread its shadow.” (Wiesel xix)