80629: a Mengele Experiment

Plot

This book is one of the most powerful Holocaust books that I have ever read and it will grip you intensely from beginning to end. It is extremely well written and will make most readers angry that innocent people can be treated in such a manner for just one reason alone. Just because they were Jewish.

This is the heartrending story of Yakoff Skurnik (Jack Oran), including his experiences as a Jew growing up in Poland and in relation to his imprisonment during the Nazi Holocaust. Yakoff's childhood/upbringing in Poland is described amongst an almost palpable anti-Semitism in what is depicted as an "inborn national pass-time" within the local/native, Polish population. Even the ancient myth of the "blood libel" still being openly taught amongst a number of other anti-Jewish prejudices which were continually being used to build generations of unjustified hostility. A hostility acted upon with violence at almost every given opportunity.

Shortly after the Nazis entered Yakoff's home town of Sierpc, the book describes how the SS & Gestapo publicly burnt down the town's oldest and largest synagogue in broad daylight. The local fire-engine was stopped at gunpoint and the synagogue allowed to burn. For their amusement the Nazis then forced the Jews to form a long line of men passing single buckets of water in an utterly hopeless attempt to quench the flames. When the men were eventually exhausted, they were then forced to `dance' around the burning synagogue at gunpoint. To further their amusement the Nazis then forced the males to strip from the waist down and crawl around the synagogue on their hands and knees. Even the elderly were not spared, indeed some elderly Jews had their beards publicly clipped for further amusement. The enormous public shame and degradation, in full view of the watching Polish civilian population who were not harassed by the Nazis, was only matched by the enthusiasm and perverse pleasure of the SS & Gestapo responsible.

The story progresses to Auschwitz & Birkenau concentration camps and the "selection" upon arrival. Following which a long column, each individual wearing the prominent yellow, six pointed `Star of David', (including the elderly, the frail, all females, as well as children and babes in arms - including most of Yakoff's family) proceeded straight to the gas chambers. Only the males considered "able to work" were spared instant death.

The "selection" and Yakoff's other experiences described here are replete with further episodes of degradation, beatings and other sick/perverted Nazi jokes which rend the imagination as to how man can stoop to such deranged levels. Yakoff personally witnessing many fellow Jewish inmates being beaten to death in front of him by "senior prisoners", who used their heavy sticks against the heads of the victims until their skulls audibly cracked.

Another of the many slaughters involved an episode on Christmas Day itself. After the Nazi troops had attended Church, tens of thousand of only Jewish prisoners were selected to run a gauntlet along a mud filled track lined on both sides with troops carrying batons and trained German Shepherd attack dogs. Each Jewish prisoner was forced to carry a quantity of rocks and run the gauntlet whilst being beaten at every step by wooden clubs and bitten by dogs. Those who fell or slipped were beaten to death, their bodies chewed by the dogs. Thousands died.

What also pervades the described concentration camp procedures is the lengths to which the Nazi regime was prepared to go to ensure accuracy in documenting the numbers and identities of Jewish prisoners in custody and even those who were murdered. The corpses were always piled in groups of five high for ease of counting and "disposal". The left arm of each dead prisoner was pulled out and his tattooed number taken, ticked off against a list of the prisoners, before being transported to the crematoria.

In due course, Yakoff and a number of other Jewish prisoners were selected for "medical experimentation" by Nazi "medical" staff under Dr. Josef Mengele. The experiences and inhumane levels of depravity incorporated into the experiments are not suitable for mention in any review. Suffice to say that they are beyond anything previously experienced in the camps by Yakoff. The experiences described are not for the squeamish, yet to appreciate the context of the Jewish suffering and the levels of Nazi barbarity it is perhaps necessary to persevere & read the agonising accounts of Yakoff, as one who managed to survive against all the odds, whilst others who were experimented upon at the same time perished.

Yakoff's experiences are described until his liberation towards the war's end. It is difficult to comprehend the vastness of the Nazi death machine at work here. In Birkenau alone, the gas chambers/crematoriums could ruthlessly murder/dispose of over 2,000 at a time, many times a day. The casualty figures are akin to numerous "September 11" type tragedies every single day, for many years. We all owe it to ourselves to read this book and to ensure that this does not happen again. I highly recommend this book.