Doctor 117641: A Holocaust Memoir

by Louis J. Micheels

The author recounts his experiences hiding in Nazi-occupied Netherlands and surviving two years at Auschwitz, and describes changes in his life after his liberation

Genres: History

216 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1989

Reviews

[Maddy Gold · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a compelling memoir despite being written very clinically. It’s essentially a sequential list of events focusing less on describing the atrocities and more on Micheels’ internal experience; how he fortified his mind to keep living day after day, what he held onto to give him strength, and what he refused to dwell on knowing it could destroy him. The writing style makes sense when he discusses how hard it was to access or face his emotions both during his time at the camps and after.

[Bernie Weisz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written By Bernie Weisz Historian/Book Reviewer Contact: BernWei1@aol.com As humanity nears the 21st Century, the systematic annihilation of 6 million Jews during the Second World War is the ugliest blight on humanity for the preceeding century. Although there are countless books out there about this, the still unanswered question remains: how could an advanced, modern state execute systematic murder of a whole group of people for no other reason than they were Jewish? Despite other events in modern history (Black African slavery importation, The Armenian Massacre, Roman treatment of Christians, The Japanese massacre of the Chinese in Nanking, etc.) never has one nation used all of it's means, i.e. ideological, political, military, technological and material, etc., to execute a program of mass murder of other people. Louis J. Micheels, M.D. was a Jewish medical student in the Netherlands in 1940 when the Nazi's invaded. Written in 1989, Micheels details through his experience the growth of the virulent ideology that underscored the plan to annihilate all European Jews. In 1942, attempting to escape the Nazi systematic exposure of Jews to hunger, sickness, cruelty, imprisonment in Ghettos and the deadly "Zyclon-B" gassing in concentration camps, Dr. Micheels took his fiancee Nora and attempted to flee to neutral Switzerland.
Finally, Micheels recalls many aspects of Auschwitz that few other accounts bear. He writes how he used his position to save other prisoners from the "death selection" process and his revolt of the Nazi doctors violating their "Hippocratic Oath" by performing sadistic medical experiments. Another topic was food. Food was power in the camps, and there were those that would kill for it. Micheels also, in his escape from a Nazi transport fleeing the Allies at the end of the war, dispels the myth that all European Jews went passively to their death in the camps. Micheels discusses Jewish resistance, Nazi fear of the Russians approaching from the East, and why the Allies didn't bomb the Concentration Camps, despite the Anglo-American cognizance of their existence. This book is a personal testament of a survivor of the Nazi horrors and his statement of how important love is is for survival.

[Jpavalock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was mentioned in "Night" by Elie Wiesel. Very interesting perspective.