Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses antisemitism, the Holocaust, murder, and physical and sexual violence.

“I cannot acquit myself of the charge that I am, in part, responsible for the destruction of my own parents and of my two young sons.”

Lengyel decides to accompany her husband, Miklos, when he is forcibly deported from their city of Cluj, in Transylvania. Her parents accompany them also, along with Lengyel and Miklos’s two sons, Arvad and Thomas. Later, at the first selection upon entering the extermination camp, Lengyel encourages her mother and Arvad to go to the left to avoid hard labor; this ultimately leads to their death in the gas chamber. Lengyel feels responsible for her family’s deaths, as she believed the Nazis’ assurances that their family would be kept safe and her decision to accompany Miklos resulted in the entire family being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“The dead, the contagiously ill, those suffering from organic diseases, the parched, the famished, and the mad must all travel together in this wooden gehenna.”

Lengyel describes the intolerable and terrifying conditions aboard the train car. She details the family’s journey to reach the camp, where they must endure thirst, starvation, and the cruel indifference of guards along the way, foreshadowing the Cruel and Degrading Treatment at Auschwitz-Birkenau. She also alludes to The Mass Genocide Committed by the Nazis, noting how conditions are so poor as to kill as many people as possible before they even reach the camp.