56 pages • 1 hour read
Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz
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Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Camp”
Lengyel describes the hierarchies that exist within the camp. Under the German commandants, a Lageraelteste (leader) is selected from among the inmates to rule among the 30,000 women. She has several sub-directors to whom she delegates different tasks; all receive private quarters. Other women are allocated to the roles of policewomen. Their job is to drive away women who approach the fences. There are also corpse collectors, nurses, fire officers, and garbage collectors. Four hundred women work in the kitchens, which is considered a privilege; they get to eat food of a higher quality than the rest of the prisoners.
Jews and Russians are treated the most cruelly of the camp inhabitants. Common criminals from Germany are treated especially well and often hold leadership positions.
Although there is a washroom, there is rarely water, and the women are constantly parched with excruciating thirst. Some drink from stagnant puddles days after rain and subsequently die.
Lengyel is thrilled one day to discover pieces of twine that she can tie together to make a belt. She fashions wood into a knife and two pieces of material into a toothbrush and a handkerchief; she feels thrilled with these acquisitions.
Chapter 7 Summary: “A Proposal in Auschwitz”
Lengyel befriends a Polish carpenter called Tadek, who is charged with repairing bunks in the women’s barracks. Tadek shares his lunch of potatoes with Lengyel, which is an exciting feast for Lengyel. Lengyel is touched when Tadek brings her a shawl to wrap around her hair. However, she soon comes to understand that Tadek expects sexual favors for his friendship and gifts. She is repulsed and upset, and refuses him.
Another woman in the barrack, Lilli, accepts Tadek’s offer and contracts syphilis; Lengyel spends her bread ration on the black market for medicine to treat Lilli.
Chapter 8 Summary: “I am Condemned to Death”
Lengyel and Magda are selected for death as a punishment for wrapping scarves around their heads and throats when they become sick (the prisoners are not permitted to change from the clothing they are allocated, even years after they arrive at the camp).
Lengyel says that although some dismiss the stories of the gas chambers and the crematorium as rumors, she believes that they are true, and so she casts around for a way to escape. She runs toward the kitchen, busying herself by putting away plates, and then helps carry one of the soup pots out to the barracks, allowing herself to slip back into her barrack. She then changes clothes with another woman. When people in her barrack mention that she has been selected, she responds that they must be confused.
She gives her shoes to one of the inmate overseers who threatens to report her.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Infirmary”
Lengyel’s section of the camp designates a building to become an infirmary. She is selected as a liaison between the camp doctors due to her experience as a surgical aid in her husband’s hospital.
Although they have limited, unsterile equipment and little medicine, the infirmary is constantly filled with sick women. Lengyel is moved into a room with the four other women workers of the hospital, which is spacious and comfortable compared to the packed koias. Her conditions improve even more when they are moved into an old urinal with camp beds, which feels like a luxury.
The group often discusses the possibility of liberation, pouring over German newspapers whenever they can get a copy.
The infirmary is often a hotspot for the selections; Lengyel and the other infirmary workers encourage anyone who is well enough to return to their barracks when a selection occurs.
Contagious cases are referred to a larger hospital in another part of the camp, but, most often, these individuals are taken in a Red Cross van directly to the gas chambers.
The guards intentionally confuse the prisoners by changing rules; for a time, those with scarlet fever are immediately sent to the gas chamber, but later, a group with scarlet fever is recuperated and returned to their old barracks.
Eva Weiss, a young nurse, contracts scarlet fever. She knows that she will be sent to the gas chamber, but lies to the other prisoners being transported with her, pretending that they are going to a larger hospital rather than the gas chamber, to not distress or panic them.
A young Italian psychiatric patient believes herself to still be spinning yarn in a forced labor factory. She is found dead, having ripped her clothing off to make material for her imaginary spindle.
Chapter 10 Summary: “A New Reason for Living”
“L,” a Frenchman who performs labor at the women’s camp, frequents the infirmary with a wound on his foot. Through “L,” Lengyel begins to work for the resistance movement, disseminating news about the war through the camp, delivering posts in secret, and gathering information on what happens at the camp so it can be shared later.
Through this work, Lengyel comes to understand exactly what happens at Birkenau for those condemned to death: They are either shot in the forest of Braezinsky or taken to the gas chambers in the “white house.” Initially, these gas chambers are used indiscriminately, but after 1943, they are reserved for Jews and Roma; Aryans are shot, injected in the heart with poison, or hanged.
Lengyel notes that 24,000 corpses could be disposed of each day through the crematoria. Sometimes, pits are dug to burn more bodies.
Lengyel, along with other resistance workers, records the hundreds of thousands of individuals who are put to death in Auschwitz-Birkenau during May, June, and July of 1944: Over 1 million people are murdered during this period.
Lengyel watches a new trainload of prisoners arrive as she is collecting blankets for the infirmary. As in the case of her own arrival, guards act relaxed. They allow families to stay together when they insist, then sort them all to the left, sending them to the gas chambers. There is even a band of inmates playing music so that the situation feels calm and cheerful.
The prisoners are taken to the gas chamber, which resembles a bath house. Soap and towels are even distributed in some cases. The Nazis maintain this pretense until individuals are inside the chamber, at which point a heavy door is shut and locked. The Nazi guards wait a few minutes to allow heat to build up in the small space and then tip a cylinder of Cyclone-B into the room. In the rare case that people survive the gas chamber, they are shoved into the crematorium along with the corpses.
The Jews charged with dealing with the corpses are called the Sonderkommando; they pull the corpses from the gas chambers with hooked sticks, shear the victims’ hair, remove any valuables (including gold teeth), and load them into the crematorium. Dr. Pasche, a member of the Sonderkommando, tells Lengyel of these details and the numbers of people dying each day, correctly predicting that he himself will soon be “liquidated.”
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
Lengyel continues to explore the Cruel and Degrading Treatment at Auschwitz-Birkenau through the condition of the prisoners, using vivid details and descriptive language to convey the extent of their mistreatment. With no running water, soap, combs, or toothbrushes, she says that the “dirty, evil-smelling women inspired a profound disgust in their companions and even in themselves” (77). Similarly, she characterizes the extreme thirst the prisoners suffered as “hell-fire that was constantly gnawing at [their] gullets” (78).
Even the positive moments in Lengyel’s daily life characterize her extreme deprivation: “One of my koia companions gave me a royal gift: two fragments of rag” (80). With these rags, Lengyel is thrilled to have materials to blow her nose and brush her teeth, her relief and excitement at being able to have tools for these simple tasks conveys the extent of her deprivation. Similarly, Lengyel’s excitement when she is moved into a space for the infirmary workers conveys the horrendous nature of Barrack 26 with its rows of packed koias: “[I]t was the old urinal in Barrack No. 12, but it was to be our own. The room was so small that it could barely hold two narrow camp beds. Therefore, we adopted the system of beds in tiers, as in the barracks. Three tiers made six bunks. It was like a dream” (99). Though these conditions are still dire, Lengyel says this was “like a dream” compared her previous quarters, showing she has become accustomed to horrific circumstances.
These chapters further detail The Mass Genocide Committed by the Nazis through Lengyel’s contacts in the resistance movement, such as the Sonderkommando doctor, Dr. Pasche. Lengyel describes the horrific scale of the killing machine that operated at Auschwitz-Birkenau: “Three hundred and sixty corpses every half hour, which was all the time it took to reduce human flesh to ashes, made 720 per hour, or 17,280 corpses per twenty-four hour shift. And the ovens, with murderous efficiency, functioned day and night” (112).
Her sardonic tone is evident when she observes that this specialized and efficient system “speaks well for German industry” (112). Her condemnation of the Nazi guards is also evident in her description of their intentional deception of new arrivals: “[T]he gas chamber waited, but the victims must be soothed first” (116). Details such as the band playing cheerful tunes and guards allowing individuals to remain with their family members (only to sort them to the left, sending them to the gas chambers) are merely “tactics” through which “a few guards could maintain order among these thousands of condemned” (116). Lengyel further illustrates the manipulative nature of their behavior by describing how sick arrivals are handled “tenderly” only “until the marching columns were out of sight, then the behavior of these S.S. slaves changed completely” (117).
Similarly, Lengyel continues to explore the deceptive tactics the Nazis used to ensure that their genocidal plans were not met with resistance. She notes that the gas chambers were disguised as bathhouses until the last possible moment, with accouterments designed to trick the condemned into going quietly to their execution:
The “Bath Director,” in a white blouse, distributed towels and soap—one more detail in the immense show. The prisoners then removed their clothing and disposed of their valuables on a huge table. Under the clothes hangers were plaques declaring in every European language, “If you want your effects when you go out, please make note of the number of your hanger” (118).
Lengyel further underscores the Nazi atrocities by highlighting the dehumanizing and pragmatic way they burned the prisoners, assessing as if their bodies are pieces of wood, rather than innocent humans: “The babies went in first, as kindling, then came the bodies of the emaciated, and finally the larger bodies” (122). What is more, Lengyel implies that unwitting cannibalism took place at the hands of the overseers: “Nor was it astonishing that the internees became suspicious at the sight of certain pieces of fat sausage!” (123).
In these chapters, Lengyel also introduces the theme of Empowerment Through Resistance and Hope. She details how, depressed and despondent, the resistance movement gave her a reason to live. Through this work, Lengyel felt that she was resisting the dehumanization of the camp. This work gave her purpose, and she shares how she waited “for the day to come when I could go free and tell the world, ‘This is what I saw with my own eyes’” (124). Lengyel thus suggests that despite the dehumanization she endured at the hands of the Nazis, she was still able to maintain a sense of empowerment through these acts of resistance, ultimately suggesting that there are limits to the Nazis’ power.
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