Dr. Mengele boncoló orvosa voltam az auschwitzi krematóriumban - "I was the Dr. pathologist of Dr. Mengele in the crematorium in Auschwitz "- Miklosh Nisli's famous book. Hungary, 1946 - The first and rare edition of one of the most shocking books ever written.
Tens of thousands of testimonies were written about the Holocaust and Auschwitz-Birkenau in particular. However, Miklós Nyiszli's book "I was Mengele's assistant at Auschwitz" is one of the most difficult and shocking of them all. This is in fact the first detailed report ever written on the horrific atrocities of Dr. Mengele, the "Death Angel" from Auschwitz on an almost daily basis, and on the tragic coercive missions of Jewish Sonderkommando members in the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The author Miklosh Nisli [1901-1956] a Jewish physician and writer, born in Hungary, studied pathology in Breslau, and in a few years gained a worldwide reputation. He returned to his homeland in 1930 and worked as a general practitioner in Oradea. During the re-annexation of his area of residence to Hungary, he was sent with his wife and 15-year-old daughter to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the end of June 1944 he arrived in Auschwitz. Josef Mengele who was the 'camp doctor' was particularly interested in professionals to help with the horrific experiments he performed, and Nisli met the criteria. He was separated from his family, and placed in the Sonderkommando - the unit responsible for carrying out the final solution. It is difficult to describe in words the horrors that Dr. Nisley describes in his book. He was forced to work as a physician at a facility for sick prisoners - Pavilion 12 - in Auschwitz-Birkenau, his job was to perform post-mortem autopsies on prisoners and a comparative analysis of selected internal organs and even analyzed the findings. Under the direction of the camp's chief physician, Joseph Mengele, Nisli was employed as a pathologist in the new Department of Autopsy and Surgery set up inside Crematorium 2 (where Mengele performed the horrific experiments on children, particularly twin couples as part of his research on racial groups, in an attempt to prove Norse race superiority. As horribly described in the book before us).
In mid-January 1945 the camp was evacuated and the surviving prisoners were marched on a death march to Mauthausen. Nisli who witnessed all the crimes and experiments perpetrated by the Nazis for a long and continuous period miraculously survived, despite the systematic killing perpetrated by the Nazis on officials like him, and in early May 1945 was found by American soldiers in the nearby KZ Ebensee and released. This was after, as he says in his testimony, he and his friends managed to kill a number of Germans and blow up a crematorium.
About a year later, in 1946, with great courage, he published the book before us in Hungarian under the title: "I was Dr. Mengele's pathologist at the crematorium in Auschwitz" (Dr. Mengele boncoló orvosa voltam az auschwitzi krematóriumban). In October 1947 he testified at the Nazi criminal trials at the International Court of Justice in Nuremberg, about his days at the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. The book, which was one of the most important and significant testimonies about Mengele's cruelty, and the difficult daily dilemma in which the author lived, has been translated into countless languages. In 1964 and 1968, after the author's death, new editions of his book appeared in Hungarian, entitled "I was a doctor in Auschwitz." They were translated into Romanian in 1965 and 1971 and included his testimonies in Nuremberg. Excerpts from his book appeared in the German and French press and the book in its entirety was published in New York in English. The book was also translated into Polish, French (1975), Spanish (1975), Serbo-Croatian (1982) and was published in 1982 in London. In 1985 he appeared in Hebrew translation in Tel Aviv.
171 p. 20 cm. Old cardboard cover. tears in spine. Stains. good - moderate condition.
