Five Chimneys by Olga Lengyel is a woman survivor's true story of Auschwitz.

I knew this wasn't going to be the easiest read, but by the end of the 1st chapter I already had tears in my eyes. At the end of page 24, half way through chapter 2, I had to put the book down. I wept. In what Olga calls her "second terrible error" (her "first" being that of wanting to go with her husband wherever he was being sent), she had saved her mother and eldest son from hard work, but unknowingly condemned them, along with her youngest son, to death in the gas chambers. I can only imagine the guilt that she felt, yet it was the Nazi's carrying out these terrible atrocities. How could she have known that humans could be so cruel, evil and heartless?

This wasn't the last time I was to put down the book after being so emotionally moved by her words. The things that she and other went through, the things she saw... It was a living hell... for those that were lucky enough to survive.

I took history in school and World War II was a subject we touched upon and I've been around the Imperial War Museum in London where they currently have a moving exhibition of the terrors the Jews went through at the hands of the Nazis, but still, reading this book told it in a brutally honest and heartfelt way. I learned more about what happened through this book than I did at school or at the IWM.

Five Chimneys tells us about the atrocities from the personal view of Olga Lengyel. I read it from my bed, all the while feeling guilty that I thought it was uncomfortable, while Olga had endured something which couldn't even be described as a bed and what she had had to be shared by many others.

Olga, like many others, endured being deprived of her family, possessions, having her hair cruelly clipped/shorn, clothes taken away and replaced by ill fitting rags. She was humiliated on a daily basis and didn't know whether that day would be her last. Death surrounded them and so did the stench of it. Olga learned about what was going on, about the gas chambers and the ovens... Others were in denial, but Olga knew and she was determined to survive.

Her book details what went on at the camp, as well as the trip there (many died before even reaching the death camp). It details the "food" they were given, the treatment they received, the "selections", the conditions, the experiments... Any detail Olga could remember went into this book. After all, when you've been the victim of such evil atrocities, how can you forget? By writing her autobiography of this time, she wanted to make sure we didn't forget.

Olga also tells us the stories of some of the people who she met while in the camp, most of whom never made it out.

I had always assumed that it had only been the Jews that had been subjected to this hatred from the Nazi's, but other minorities from across Europe and even some Americans were subjected to these death camps too.

This book will stay with me for the rest of my life, I'm sure of it. Never before has a book moved me so much. While you expect a "poor me" story, Olga never wonders into self pity. Instead she seems to be a power of strength and tells her story in a simple and straight forward way. There is even a glossary at the back of the book to help understand the German names and words that litter the book. Five Chimneys was written only a short time after the event, so everything was still fresh in Olga's mind, though I have no doubt that it was just as fresh on the day she died in 2001.

If there is only one book that you should read in your lifetime, then Five Chimneys by Olga Lengyel is it. Emotionally, it won't be an easy read, but it will be an unforgettable one.