Every once in a while, I feel the need to read a rather serious book. This happened to be one that I chose for no reason in particular, outside of the fact that I felt compelled to read it for some reason. I won’t lie and say that this is an easy book to read. I had to put it down several times for fear of throwing up whatever I had eaten earlier in the day. I feel that it is nevertheless and important piece of writing.
This book is by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, a Jew “saved” from the gas chambers, only to be assigned to the infamous Nazi “Angel of Death” – Dr. Josef Mengele. Once in Mengele’s service, Nyiszli is put in charge of many of Mengele’s sick and twisted human experiments. One such experiment was recently brought to light in the article http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/dr-mengele-s-victim-why-one-auschwitz-survivor-avoided-doctors-for-65-years-a-666327.html.
It truly is hard to comprehend the horrors that occurred at the concentration camps during the reign of the Nazis. Reading this book, it took a while for me to wrap my head around the amount of blind, misguided hatred required to create monsters of this nature. It was tough to understand how Nyiszli could live with himself after all the horrors that he had seen and been faced to perform. But it is an interesting story of the struggle of the human nature to fight to live. Nyiszli did what he needed to do to survive, and ensure the relative safety of his family.
After finishing this book, it is hard to understand that some folks out there are just as evil today. While possibly not hell bent on genocide as Hitler and the Nazis, there are those still hell bent on destroying people.
It makes one appreciate the life that we live in a free country.
Amanda the Bookaholic 