A DOCTOR S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

When the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, they sent virtually the entire Jewish population to Auschwitz. A Jew and a medical doctor, the prisoner Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared from death for a grimmer fate: to perform 'scientific research' on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the man who became known as the infamous 'Angel of Death': Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele's personal research pathologist. In that capacity, he also served as physician to the Sonderkommando, the Jewish prisoners who worked exclusively in the crematoriums and were routinely executed after four months. Miraculously, Nyiszli survived to give this terrifying and sobering account. His uniquely horrifying position and the brutal, unsentimental truth of his words provide a searing portrait of an unimaginable time. Of Bruno Bettelheim's famous foreword, Neal Ascherson has written, 'Its eloquence and outrage must guarantee it a permanent place in Jewish historiography.'