Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz

Toward the end of 1944, the camp’s rules relax slightly as many German guards are recruited to the front.

Inmate couples who fell in love across the electrified fences chat about plans for the future. Guards sometimes shoot at these couples for fun. A Polish woman is struck in the eye with a bullet; her eye needs to be removed.

Each morning, the bodies of those who have died by suicide running into the fence are removed from the fence.

Lengyel explains that the policies around tattooing varied through the years of the extermination camps; sometimes new arrivals were tattooed, or sometimes not. Some tattoos conferred special status—such as for individuals with special jobs—that protected these individuals from death. Jewish prisoners and those of different racial backgrounds were tattooed with an additional symbol—for example, the star of David for Jews. Nuns and priests were subjected to particularly torturous and degrading treatment, such as trying to empty a spring with buckets as they were whipped.

Lengyel recalls a nun who declares that “no nation can exist without God” (82). As punishment, she is sent to the medical experimentation section of the camp; she dies a painful death from x-ray experimentation at the infirmary where Lengyel works.