Miklos Nyiszli

Miklos Nyiszli was a Hungarian Jewish pathologist imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps, principally Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, Josef Mengele used him as a pathologist; he would likely have been killed had he not accepted.

Describing his first view of Auschwitz, he saw on arriving in 1943: "...an immense square chimney built of red brigs tapering towards the summit. I was especially struch by the enormous tongues of flame rising betwen the lightning rods....I tried to realize what hellish cooking would require such a tremendous fire....A faint wind brought the smoke towards me. My nose, then my throat, were filled with the nauseating odor of burning flesh and scorched hair."

He attempted, as best he could, to maintain his medical ethics. His relationship with Mengele, though, was complex. At times, it seemed that they worked together as colleagues, although that was conflictual for him and led to some loss of integity: "I would begin practicing again, yes, but I swore that as long as I lived I would never lift a scalpel again." The scalpel referred to the autopsies he had done for Mengele; he has not been accused of direct experimentation on living people.

Describing a relatively close moment, "A long afternoon in deep discussion with Dr. Mengele, trying to clear up a number of points [during which] I was no longer a humble ... prisoner, and I...defended and explained my point of view as though this was a medical conference of which I were a full-fledged member." He reflected "I know men, and it seemed to me that my firm attitude, my measured sentences and even my silences were qualities by which I had succeeded in making Dr. Mengele, before whom the SS themselves trembled, offer me a cigarette in the course of a particularly animated discussion, proving he forgot for a moment the circumstances of our relationship." Even basic courtesy was rare in the concentration camps, and the proffer of a cigarette, seemingly a minor event, was both unauthorized and far beyond the norms of SS behavior.

Nyiszli later gave a 1945 deposition against Mengele and wrote a 1960 book about his experiences.