Olga Lengyel (1908–2001) was a Jewish nurse of Hungarian origin, a prisoner in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and the only survivor from her family environment. In addition, she was the prosecution witness in the process carried out by the British courts against 45 former Nazi SS troops, known as the Bergen-Belsen trial.
She is recognized for capturing her experiences in the Holocaust, in the book entitled Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivors True Story of Auschwitz. She was also the founder of the Olga Lengyel Shoah Institute, whose mission has been to report on the horrors of the Jewish genocide and actively educate future generations to prevent the same mistakes from being made.
"Selection" of Hungarian Jews on the Auschwitz-II ramp Source: Unknown. Several sources believe the photographer to have been Ernst Hoffmann or Bernhard Walter of the SS
Biography
Private life
Olga Lengyel was born on October 19, 1908, in Transylvania, a region of present-day Hungary that previously belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her childhood is almost unknown, knowing only that she was the daughter of Ferdinánd Bernát and Ileana Légmán.
Her father was Jewish, but Olga always stated that her family used to be quite liberal in the religious sphere, she even attended a Roman Catholic school for girls, specifically the Mariánum School.
At King Ferdinand I University in Cluj he began studying literature and geography. She then became interested in nursing by marrying the Jewish doctor, Miklós Lengyel, and began offering surgical assistance at the Cluj-Napoca hospital, run by her husband. With him she had her son Tamás and they adopted Dávid, a Jewish boy who lost both parents in the labor service.
Before the Nazi occupation of Hungary, a doctor of German origin who was an employee of the couple extorted them to avoid the arrest of Dr. Lengyel by the Gestapo. He proposed that they simulate the sale of the hospital in their name, but instead of helping them, he forced them to hand over their home as well.
Years in Auschwitz
Entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Source: Fabian Börner, zugeschnitten von Agp
Olga, along with her husband, parents, and two children were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. In cattle cars, the family group traveled through Central Europe for seven days, along with other Jews from Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.
Upon reaching the concentration camp, Olga was separated from her husband and father, but also from her mother and her two children, who died in the gas chamber. She would then become the sole survivor of her family and a witness to the atrocities of the genocide.
During his years at Auschwitz-Birkenau he offered assistance in the infirmary and secretly participated in resistance activities, such as the demolition of one of the crematorium ovens. In 1945, after the Nazi movement fell, the Auschwitz prisoners including Olga were freed.
Her husband had died at the end of 1944 when the Germans, faced with the proximity of the enemy troops, "freed" their prisoners so that there would be no evidence of the concentration camps. This event is known as the so-called "death march", in which many died under Nazi weapons and many others from weakness or illness.
Postwar life
After the Second World War, Olga emigrated to the United States, passing first through Odessa (Ukraine) and Paris before settling in New York.
It was in France, in 1947, when he published the book that recounted his terrible experiences Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivors True Story of Auschwitz.
His testimony during the Bergen-Belsen trial, a process that the British Court of Justice carried out against 45 Nazi troops, deserves separate mention, not only for the torture and murders, but also for the experiments they carried out with Jewish prisoners.
Among them were Doctors Joseph Mengele and Fritz Klein, SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Josef Kramer and Warden Irma Grese. The latter was a supervisor nicknamed the "angel of death" and noted for her wicked behavior with the prisoners. The caretaker was part of the stories that Olga includes in her autobiography.
Last years
After contracting a second marriage, with Gustavo Aguirre, they moved to Havana, until they were expelled by the communist revolution of Fidel Castro.
Upon his return to North America he founded the Memorial Library, under the patronage of the State University of New York, as well as the World War II Art Collection. He also formed the Olga Lengyel Shoah Institute, a foundation dedicated to spreading the memories of the Holocaust.
On April 15, 2001, at the age of 92, Olga Lengyel died in the United States. After being the only survivor in her family and battling cancer three different times.
The experiences of the Hungarian nurse in the concentration camps not only contributed to the awareness of human rights, but also inspired many. Among them William Styron, author of the novel Sophie's Choice, awarded the National Book Award in 1980, as well as the film of the same name (1982), which was nominated for five Academy Film Awards.
Plays
His book Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivors True Story of Auschwitz, published in France in 1947, was one of the first works on the Holocaust. Later a new American edition was titled I Survived Hitler's Ovens. In 1961 the testimony of the Hungarian nurse reached the Spanish-speaking world, bearing the name Los hornos de Hitler.
In addition to giving testimony of what happened in the concentration camps, the Jewish survivor expresses a feeling of guilt that would weigh on her for the rest of her days, since she considered that her actions could have caused the death of her parents and children. In fact, in the first lines of her autobiography you can read the phrase “Mea culpa, mi culpa, mea maxima culpa! "
Much of Olga's legacy is consolidated in the preservation of the memory of the Jewish genocide, her activism and her educational work. As she indicated in her memoirs, her intention was to avoid at all costs that the history that so many Jews suffered from repeating itself and that subsequent generations turn their past into a future.
He also founded the World War II Art Collection and the Memorial Library, which began in 2006 an educational program in rural schools and small towns, in order to form a Network of Holocaust Educators.
References
- Olga Lengyel. (2019, December 8). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Recovered from es.wikipedia.org
- The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights. (sf) Olga Lengyel. Recovered from toli.us
- Turda M. (2016). Redemptive Family Narratives: Olga Lengyel and the Textuality of the Holocaust: In Memoriam Elie Wiesel. Archives Moldaviae, 8, 69–82.
- Middle Sister Reviews. (2016, April 2). Biography & Memoir. Recovered from middlesisterreviews.com
- Wikipedia contributors. (2019, December 7). Olga Lengyel. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Recovered from en.wikipedia.org