56 pages • 1 hour read
Olga LengyelFive Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Canada”
Clothing and possessions brought by the deportees who died in the gas chambers are sorted in a warehouse called “Canada.” Those who work in Canada are extremely privileged; they often have opportunities to steal items that are circulated among the camp’s black market. Some prisoners who work in Canada try to barter with guards to escape, but mostly the guards shoot the inmate and simply take the item offered in the barter.
Lengyel reflects that she is particularly struck by the memory of rows of baby carriages lined up in Canada.
In an adjacent enclosure to Lengyel’s, a group of Czechs live in relative luxury; their children are spared and they are allowed to keep their clothes. However, one day the Czech camp is abruptly liquidated and these individuals are sent to the gas chambers. A Czech boy who had fallen in love with a girl on Lengyel's side of the fence trades a diamond to a guard for the opportunity to spend a few hours on her side of the fence. He is killed the next day.
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Morgue”
Lengyel, along with the other hospital workers, has to clean and dispose of the corpses in a pile of rotting bodies, the image of which she says continues to haunt her.
A Polish girl who is helping Lengyel to transport a corpse comes across the body of her mother, who she thought was safe in the mountains.
Lengyel recalls the way bodies became swollen with malnutrition.
An unknown powder is stirred into the prisoners’ food, which seems to stop menstruation and make people slow and listless. Lengyel writes that, after liberation, a Moscow professor found evidence of the withering of ovaries in women who were prisoners.
Lengyel recalls working at the train station, bringing the luggage of new arrivals to Canada. She is tortured by the memory of mothers adjusting their children’s coats and with people seeming relieved to have reached their destination. Lengyel describes how she would whisper to women to say that their children were 12, but they usually looked at her with disgust and confusion.
A group of Americans arrive one day, demanding to be treated with respect. One Nazi guard instructs another to take the men to the “American Camp.” Lengyel hears gunshots from the woods a few minutes later. The prisoners listen to a Bing Crosby record in Canada, which was brought by the Americans.
Chapter 13 Summary: “The ‘Angel of Death’ Versus the ‘Grand Selector’”
Elisabeth Hasse and Irma Griese make selections from among the inmates on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. The 40,000 women must stand, terrified. The beautiful Irma favors picking beautiful women for the gas chambers.
On one occasion, 315 selected women are shut into a washroom; the doors are nailed shut and they are left there for three days. Lengyel begs Dr. Klein, whom she accompanies on rounds, to attend to the women. Dr. Klein, in a rare show of pity, releases the women who are not already dead.
Dr. Klein calls Lengyel to him one day as the prisoners are kneeling in the rain as a punishment. Irma Griese is furious that Dr. Klein ordered around one of her charges; she takes her anger out on Lengyel by beating her.
Lengyel reflects that she is amazed that Griese didn’t send her to the gas chambers as punishment.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Organization”
“Organizing” is used as a euphemism for stealing in the camp. Workers in Canada often manage to send items of clothing to the camp for fellow inmates. In other cases, people steal from others; there are cases of both selflessness and selfishness.
Malika, a policewoman prisoner, organizes the trades with the women’s Czech neighbors.
Lengyel and a fellow infirmary worker trade aspirin tablets for some of Malika’s food; they feel guilty, but are famished.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Accursed Births”
As soon as a baby is born at the camp, the rule is that both the mother and her baby are sent to the gas chambers. On the other hand, if a baby is stillborn, the mother is usually allowed to survive. To save lives, Lengyel and the other infirmary workers inject the new baby with poison as soon as it is born, killing it.
All pregnant women who arrive at the camp are sent immediately to the gas chamber, so women try to hide their pregnancies.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
Lengyel underscores The Mass Genocide Committed by the Nazis through her description of the abandoned possessions in Canada, using these items to symbolize the immense loss of life. In addition to highlighting the sheer amount of these items, Lengyel also notes the sinister significance of the different kinds of items she encounters there:
[A]mong the items in “Canada” that impressed me painfully was the row of baby carriages, which brought to mind all the unfortunate infants the Germans had murdered. The children’s shoes and toy section, always well stocked, was another heartrending place (60).
Through these items, Lengyel is reminded of the hundreds of thousands of children who were killed during the Holocaust.
Lengyel continues to focus not only on the atrocities the Nazis committed but also their various motivations. She suggests, for instance, that the actions of the Nazis are rendered more reprehensible by their clear motivation to gain possessions to enrich themselves in the course of the mass murder. Lengyel observes how these drive their manipulative tendencies, such as in their carefully worded announcement that it was “‘not against the rules’ to take personal objects along” (59). Lengyel points out that this “indirect invitation proved much more effective than if they had suggested that their victims bring their jewelry” (59). Lengyel thus suggests that a complete understanding of the Nazis’ crimes requires not just knowledge of what they did but of why they did these things and how they employed deception and manipulation to achieve these ends.
Lengyel similarly underscores the Nazi atrocities in other ways. She notes, for instance, the Nazi collection of human hair for industry: “To the many objects taken from the deportees’ baggage was added the hair of the victims, from the clippings and from the corpses” (60). The text thus suggests that the Nazis’ dehumanization of the murdered millions demonstrated by the robbery of their possessions extended even to the robbery of their hair. As another example, Lengyel describes the Nazis’ bid to receive items from the families of the condemned Czechs: “[P]ost cards were distributed to the Czechs to inform their close relatives that they were well and to ask for additional parcels. A few hours later, old and young, sick and healthy, were all exterminated” (61). Thus, Lengyel states that, to maximize their theft, the Nazis falsely reassured the families of those who would die imminently.
Lengyel also recalls the emptied Czech camp in these chapters, which further elucidates the program of genocide within the camp: “[T]he first rays of the sun revealed, scattered on the ground of the Czech camp, a few abandoned items: a crust of bread, a rag doll, and some pieces of clothing. That was all that was left of the short-lived Czech village of 8,000 souls” (62). The emptiness of the abandoned space, with only a few hints of its former habitation, symbolizes the immense loss of life which took place overnight, as does the smoke coming from the crematoria that night, which Lengyel and her friends understand as “the remains of our poor neighbors” (62).
Another vivid image Lengyel uses in this chapter to emphasize the horrors of the camp is the piles of rotting cadavers, an image that leaves her with “the ghastliest memories” (63). The state of the corpses also illustrates the horrific treatment of those living at the camps, who are starved and poisoned with a mysterious white powder: “From the bodies in the morgue we could determine what physical deterioration the camp life caused in the internees. After even a short stay” (63). Lengyel recalls the deformity of the corpses: “[M]any of the prisoners looked like skeletons. They had lost from fifty to sixty percent of their original weight and had shrunken in height” (64). Traumatic memories thus function as a recurring motif, continually recentering the Nazi policy of extermination and the trauma this inflicted on its victims, highlighting the Cruel and Degrading Treatment at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
