Throughout history, there have been many injustices that have plagued the Earth from King Leopold II, who conquered and killed thousands of innocent Congolese for personal monetary growth, to a Japanese internment camp during World War II. While those events were considered horrific, there was one that surpassed them all. Auschwitz, recognized as the worst Jewish interment camp, has the highest death count of around 1. 25 million Jews under the reign of Hitler. Being a byproduct of the Final Solution, Auschwitz was constructed because killing Jews individually was a tedious task.
With the integration of internment camps, the ability to commit mass genocide would be much easier since they would be in a more concentrated area. The novel, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, written by Filip Muller, recounts the tale of an Auschwitz survivor and the life he and other Jewish prisoners had to endure behind its walls. He stated that Auschwitz was a “terrible accusation against God and humanity” (Muller 1999, x). This novel was written to bring light to tragedies that ensued during and the inhumanity shown to the population of Auschwitz.
Filip Muller, born 1922 in Sered, Czechoslovakia, grew up as a traditional Slovakian Jew. In the year 1942, during the height of the Nazi regime, Muller, along with thousands of other Jews, were uprooted and dragged into Auschwitz . Being forced into these concentration camps, each Jew was assigned a tedious job that slowly drained the life out of them. During Muller time at Auschwitz, he was forced to work as a gas chamber operator as he unwillingly killed thousands of women, men, and children.
Since Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers is written from Muller’s accounts at the concentration camp, the ain purpose was to show the struggles and hardships they had to endure during their time at Auschwitz. By highlighting the brutality of the SS troops, Muller hoped to accentuate key factors that lead to Auschwitz, in hopes that history did not repeat itself. In the year 1942, thousands of Jews were forced out of their homelands and into concentration camps.
One such victim was Filip Muller, a 20 year old Czechoslovakian boy, who was forced into labor by the Nazi regime in Auschwitz. Entering the camp, Muller was branded with his identification number of 29236. Fearing for his life, Muller worked as a gas chamber operator in which he forced thousands of his own people to their demise. Fueled by the threat of “harassment, torture, and a violent death” (Muller 1999, 7), many did as they were told. Even though many of these tasks were heinous, Muller and his fellow sonderkommando’s underwent these tasks in order to live another day.
Surviving was the prisoner’s number one priority, even if it meant killing fellow Jews. As the story progressed, Muller’s will to survive slowly declined. There was a point in time when he no longer wanted to live a eartless life. He said, “I had come to believe that there were no human feelings left inside of me” (Muller 1999, 48). Feeling as if his humanity was slowly leaving him, Muller was afflicted by the amount of death he caused. So much so that he wanted to alleviate himself from the pain of knowing he killed thousands of innocent people.
Accepting death by the hand, Muller entered the gas chambers, but was intervened by an SS soldier as he wanted him to die under their accords, not his. By assisting in countless acts of evil, such as cremation, gassing, transporting orpses, and digging thousands of graves for the dead, the burden of death was almost too much for him to handle. During his time at Auschwitz, Muller aided in the killing of many Jews. Two of the most vivid memories of hearing the agony of the people as their last breaths were taken in the gas chambers.
He could hear the “Sound of coughing, screaming and shouting for help could be door. I was unable to make out knocking heard from behind the individual words, for the shouts were drowned by and banging against the door, intermingled with sobbing and crying. Only now ound of muffled knocking against the door. and then there was a moan, a rattle, or the But soon even that ceased and in the sudden silence each of us felt the horror of this terrible mass death” (Muller 1999,33-34). The second ing when he saw people “crowded together on one side of the room, were shaking with terror.
Almost all of them were now sobbing: their weeping sounded like a heart-breaking dirge. Most of them were badly hurt from truncheon blows as well as from the sharp teeth of the dogs” (Muller 199, 109). Both of these quotes hinted at the fact that they already knew they ere going to be killed and there was nothing Muller could do about it fearing for his own life. The torturing continued for months until, May 1945, Muller and other members of Auschwitz, were liberated by the Americans.
Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chamber was able to convey a strong message of the struggles and injustices those in Auschwitz had to face from the Nazi regime. Muller was able to show the duality of emotions as they chose survival over their own moral ethics. This was shown countless times throughout the novel, but the tone was set, in the beginning of he novel, when someone said, “My God, what on earth is going on here? Prisoners are being killed by fellow prisoners” (Muller 1999, 4). This introduced the topic of how prisoners of Auschwitz will of survival overpowered their moral compass.
When first reading this novel, it was shocking to see how a many people could put their lives over the lives of others. The idea of Muller gassing his fellow Jews seemed not to bother him. Especially when examining the two vivid aforementioned quotes about groups of Jews screaming in agony in the gas chambers. When looking at these quotes, it is hard to see the emotion ehind Muller, but as the story progressed, the question of “how could he help these people without getting himself killed” came to mind. Muller was trying to survive in a world full of death and suffering.
Disobedience led to death, whereas loyalty left him barely alive. The emotional and mental drain was evident when Muller said, “I had come to believe that there were no human feelings left inside of me” (Muller 1999, 48). Slowly turning less and less human the more people he killed, Muller felt as if his body was turning into a machine that performed tasks of cruelty in order to subsist. The degradation of Muller’s will to survive was evident, but even though he endured many hardships, he was able to hold on long enough for him to make it out of Auschwitz alive.
Though this text is biased, as it is from the point of view from a survivor, Muller was able to highlight the atrocities they underwent during this time in history. Throughout this book, Filip Muller was able to convey a very strong, passionate message of the struggles he and his fellow Jews experienced in Auschwitz. The use of personal narrative underlined the brutality that took place during the World War II. This allowed for a glimpse of what life was like as a European Jew during the mid 20th century.
This novel’s ability to reiterate the main purpose by using graphic scenes and gaudy detail to instill a sense of disgust, showed the cruelty and horror experienced by those who were encamped at Auschwitz. Muller, through this book, emphasized the struggles and the tenacious will of those encamped. Hoping that his arguments would allow for future generations to learn from past mistakes, Muller highlighted key elements in efforts to prevent another mass genocide from happening again in human history.
