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Olga LengyelFive Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Olga Lengyel
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses antisemitism, the Holocaust, murder, and physical and sexual violence.
Olga Lengyel (1908-2001) was a Hungarian woman who was imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1944 until January 1945. A surgeon’s assistant, Lengyel voluntarily accompanied her husband, Miklos Lengyel, after the Nazis falsely assured the family that Miklos would be working as a doctor in Germany and his family would be made comfortable. In actuality, the Lengyel family—including Lengyel, Miklos, Lengyel’s parents, and Lengyel and Miklos’s two sons, Thomas and Arvard—was destined for the notorious Nazi extermination and concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, which they reached after a seven-day long arduous journey in a cattle car.
As a camp prisoner, infirmary worker, and member of the camp’s underground resistance, Lengyel was well placed to understand the operations of the camp, as well as the experiences of an array of prisoners, including the condemned. Lengyel witnessed countless beatings and executions. She was beaten numerous times herself and suffered from extreme deprivation due to inadequate rations.
Lengyel treated patients of the infamous Dr. Mengele, who suffered from X-ray burns, infections after unnecessary surgeries and castrations, and a range of other complications. Furthermore, Lengyel learned about the exact processes of the gas chamber and crematorium through contacts in the underground, including the Sonderkommando unit doctor, Dr. Pasche. Lengyel was also closely affiliated with acts of resistance and rebellion; she passed on packages containing explosive powder, which helped the Sonderkommandos to destroy one of the five crematoriums. Later, Lengyel witnessed the liquidation of the camp when she was forced to go on one of the death marches toward Germany, from which she successfully escaped.
Miklos Lengyel
Miklos Lengyel (1896-1945) was the husband of Olga Lengyel. Miklos was the principal surgeon and the director of a hospital in Cluj, Transylvania. Miklos was imprisoned after a Nazi summons and was forcibly deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau; his family chose to accompany him based on false assurances that they would be treated well.
At the camp’s train station selection, Miklos was sent to the right, meaning that he was allowed to live. He worked in a camp hospital as a doctor and surgeon, briefly seeing his wife twice during their imprisonment.
Miklos, who was determined to survive the war to be reunited with his wife and tell their story of the camp’s horrors, was shot and killed during a death march when he stopped to give an ailing fellow inmate a stimulant injection.
Irma Griese
Irma Griese was a Nazi guard in charge of the women’s camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and later at Belsen. Most sources cite her last name as “Grese,” but Lengyel’s memoir and this guide spell it as “Griese.” She developed a reputation for her cruel sadism, which Lengyel witnessed many times. Griese, beautiful herself, resented other beautiful women and chose them in gas chamber selections. Furthermore, Griese often subjected inmates to cruel beatings and also allegedly selected women and men to serve as her sexual slaves. Lengyel witnessed her beating a woman in front of her handsome male lover, characterizing Griese’s manipulative cruelty and her delight in hurting others both physically and emotionally.
Griese was convicted of mistreating and murdering Jewish prisoners at the Belsen trials after the conclusion of the war. She was sentenced to die and was hanged on December 13, 1945, at 22 years of age.
Dr. Mengele
Dr. Mengele was an infamous Nazi doctor who conducted needless and torturous medical experimentation on inmates. For these procedures, he often chose women at the women’s camp selections, which Lengyel witnessed. He seemed to delight in the humiliation of women, such as when he made them parade naked with their arms in the air:
The women were ordered to divest themselves completely of their rags. Then, with their arms in the air, they marched past Dr Mengele. What he could have seen in these wasted figures I cannot imagine. But he picked his victims. They were made to climb into a truck and were taken away, still entirely nude. Each time, this spectacle was both tragic and humiliating (34).
This anecdote illustrates the dehumanization of inmates by Dr. Mengele, a dehumanization underscored by the needless experimentations he performed on inmates, such as castration, burning, and submersion in ice baths. Unlike Irma Griese, who was tried and convicted for war crimes, Dr. Mengele evaded capture by fleeing to South America; he was only correctly identified after his death (Marlise, Simons. “Remains of Mengele Rest Uneasily in Brazil.” The New York Times, 1988).
