Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz

Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys is a work of nonfiction within which Lengyel recounts her experience as a prisoner of the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Lengyel published her memoir only one year after the liberation of the camp, in 1946. She was living in Paris at the time, and her account was published with the French title, Souvenirs de l'au-delà. The book was translated into English in 1995. Lengyel’s account documents the horrors of the extermination camps, including the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews and other “undesirables” (including her husband, parents, and two sons) during Lengyel’s imprisonment, as well as the cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners by Nazi guards.

This guide is written using the e-book edition of the 1995 First Academy Chicago publication of Five Chimneys.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss antisemitism, the Holocaust, murder, and physical and sexual violence.

Summary

Olga Lengyel lives in the Transylvanian city of Cluj, Hungary (in present-day Romania) with her parents, two sons, and husband, Miklos. Miklos is the principal surgeon at a hospital which he is director of, and Lengyel is the first surgical assistant.

Miklos is called in for questioning by the Nazis numerous times.