Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz

Olga Lengyel was one of the first Holocaust survivors to publish an account of the Nazi death camps, describing with unflinching honesty and precision her experiences in Auschwitz and Birkenau.

From the Midwest Book Review: 
“Having lost her husband, her parents, and her two young sons to the Nazi exterminators, Olga Lengyel had little to live for during her seven-month internment in Auschwitz. Only Lengyel’s work in the prisoners’ underground resistance and the need to tell this story kept her fighting for survival. Despite her horrifying closeness to the subject, Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz does not retreat into self-pity or sensationalism. Today, with “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia, and neo-Nazis on the rise in Western Europe, we cannot afford to forget the grisly lessons of the Holocaust. Five Chimneys is a stark reminder that the unspeakable can happen wherever and whenever ethnic hatreds, religious bigotries, and racial discriminations are permitted to exist.”

Download Chapter II: The Arrival
Download Chapter XX: The Underground

Contact

For more information about The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (TOLI), please contact info@tolinstitute.org

TOLI is located at 58 East 79th Street in Manhattan. (get directions)