Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account Summary

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In Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli tells the story of his time in Auschwitz. Dr. Nyiszli is a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp located in Poland. His story provides the world with a description of horrors that had taken place in camp in 1944. Separated from his wife and daughter, Dr. Nyiszli volunteered to work under the supervision of the head doctor in the concentration camp, Josef Mengele. It was under Dr. Mengele’s supervision that Dr. Nyiszli was exposed to the extermination of innocent people and other atrocities committed by the SS. Struggling for his own survival, Dr. Nyiszli did anything possible to survive, including serving as a doctor’s assistant to a war criminal so that he could tell the world what happened at the Auschwitz concentration camp.This hope for survival and some luck allowed Dr. Nyiszli to write about his horrific time at Auschwitz.His experiences in Auschwitz will remain apart of history because of the insight he is able to provide.

Dr. Nyiszli writes he was driven to survive so that he would be able to inform the world of what had taken place in Auschwitz. He knew if he survived he would be able to give a firsthand account of what happened and how the Nazis operated. However,
Nyiszli says he began to hope. “ A ray of hope began to grow inside me. Perhaps we would after all succeed in leaving here alive”(Nyiszli, 201). This dream began to become reality on January 17th. With the arrival of the Russians, the SS troops fled and Dr. Nyiszli’s journey to freedom began. After surviving freezing weather and not admitting to working in Auschwitz when a German officer asked, Dr. Nyiszli was even closer to liberation. The Ebensee concentration camp, the fourth camp Dr. Nyiszli stayed at, was his last. After a year of being a prisoner, Dr. Nyiszli was a free a man. The war had ended and Dr. Nyiszli had endured a horrible

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