Miklós Nyiszli

Miklos Nyiszli was a Jewish prisoner doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Originally from the city of Oradea-Nagyvarad in Hungary, Nyiszli, along with his wife and young daughter were transported to Auschwitz in April of 1944.

Upon his arrival, Nyiszli volunteered himself as a doctor and was sent to work at number 12 barracks where he operated on and tried to help ill patients with the barest of medical supplies and tools. Dr. Mengele, after observing Dr. Nyiszli’s skills moved him to a specially built room whose construction had been facilitated to cater for the carrying out of autopsies, primarily, but also any other required operations. The room had been built inside Crematorium 3, and Nyiszli, along with members of the 12th Sonderkomando were housed here.

General life in the camp

During Nyiszli’s time in the camp he witnessed many atrocities to which he refers in his book Auschwitz- A doctor’s eyewitness account. While imprisoned, Nyiszli was also forced to carry out medical tests and perform autopsies on dozens of bodies, particularly on dwarfs, midget’s twins and Jews. Dr. Mengele had done significant research into the causes of dwarfism and the birth of twins, and used Dr. Nyiszli to gather more information for him. Nyiszli also carried out the autopsies of prisoners who it was suspected had died of diseases which were prevalent in the camp. Mengele also was searching for evidence to indicate the inferiority of the Jewish race and at one point Nyiszli had to carry out medical tests on a father and son, and then, after their murder, had to prepare their skeletons to be sent to the Anthropological Museum in Berlin.

"(I) had to examine them with exact clinical methods before they died, and then perform the dissection on their still warm bodies." ¹

One day, after the gassing of a new arrival of prisoners, Nyiszli was summoned by prisoners working in the gas chambers who had a found a girl alive under a mass of bodies in the gas chamber of one of the camps crematoriums. Nyiszli, along with his fellow prisoners did their best to help and care for the girl but she was eventually taken by SS guards and shot. This incident featured in the film "The Grey Zone".

Nyiszli was appalled by the disregard for human life and lack of sympathy for human suffering shown by the SS guards and officers, but like all in the camp his actions were dictated by his tormenters, and so he was forced to perform what for him were morally confronting acts.

During his 8 or so months in Auschwitz Nyiszli observed the murders of tens-of-thousands of people including the slaughter of whole sub-camps at a time. These sub-camps held different ethnic, religious, nationality and gender groups. For example there was a Gypsy camp, several women’s camps, a Czech camp etc. Each sub-camp usually consisted of between 5,000- 10,000 prisoners, but it wasn’t unknown to come across camps with a much higher number of prisoners. Nyiszli was often told or was given prior notification when camps were to be exterminated, as it would signal that an increased workload was imminent.

When Dr. Nyiszli discovered that the women’s camp his wife and daughter were living in, Camp C, was to be exterminated he was able to bribe an SS officer to put his wife and daughter on a train to a women’s work camp. Nyiszli remained in the camp until shortly before its capture by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945. On January 18 Nyiszli, along with an estimated 66,000 other prisoners was forced on a death march which took them into various parts of the Third Reich’s territories including but not limited to: Greater Germany, Poland (which was part of Greater Germany) present-day Austria and present-day Czechoslovakia, and from there into various smaller concentration camps. See figure 1.1

After Auschwitz

Nyiszli’s first major stop after the forced mass exodus of Auschwitz prisoners was at the Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria, near the city of Linz. After a 3 day stay in one of the ‘quarantine barracks’ of Mauthausen, he was sent to the Melk und der Donau concentration camp, about 3 hours train ride away. After a total of 12 months of imprisonment, including 2 months in the Melk und der Donau camp, Nyiszli along with his fellow prisoners, was freed on May 5, 1945 when American troops reached the camp.

Map of Auschwitz death marches and info: Figure 1.1 [1]

External Links and Extra Reading

Related articles, books, websites and further reading:

Auschwitz- A doctor’s eyewitness account, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli

Five Chimneys, Olga Lengyel

¹ pg. 177, Auschwitz- A doctor’s eyewitness account- Dr. Miklos Nyiszli

www.holocaustforgotten.com

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org

www.holocaust-history.org

www.auschwitz.dk/docs/new_page_4.htm

www.faqs.org/faqs/holocaust/auschwitz/part02/

Discusses problems in the book:

www.ihr.org/jhr/v20/v20n1p20_Provan.html

www.mazal.org/Pressac/Pressac0478.htm