Doctor #117641 : a Holocaust memoir ; forward by Albert J. Solnit

"When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Louis Micheels was a medical student there. Two and a half years later, he and his fiancée, Nora, both Jews, were caught after crossing the border into Belgium and were sent to Auschwitz. In this gripping memoir, Dr. Micheels describes his precarious existence in Holland after the Nazi takeover, his experiences in Auschwitz, his participation in the death march to Dachau, and his escape from a transport near the Austrian border. Especially notable is the final chapter of the book, in which Micheels, now a psychoanalyst, reflects on the psychological impact of his experiences and his reactions to them - his inability to mourn his parents' death, his attitude toward his chief Nazi tormentor, and especially what happened to his relationship with Nora after they had passed through the agonies of the concentration camps together and were reunited in Holland. A basic theme of separation and loss runs through this account, as Micheels movingly describes his gradual detachment from the familiar world and his struggle to survive in the inhumane environment in which he found himself. Two factors helped him in this struggle: his medical background, which allowed him a privileged position, and his relationship with Nora, which represented a bridge of intensely human values to the old world and provided an invaluable antidote of love against the pervasive hate and sadism imposed by the Nazis. Now, more than forty years later, Micheels tells his story, attributing the long interval to the spirit of silence that was fostered in the death camps. According to Micheels, "Every inmate, as soon as he knew of the genocide, experiments with human beings, and other such crimes, became a Geheimnisträger or 'Bearer of the Secret.' Such prisoners were not supposed to survive lest they give testimony to these hellish crimes. Strangely, the sense of being a Geheimnisträger, of having been a witness to ...such unimaginable horrors, did not disappear after the war but lingered on." Micheels at last breaks the wall of silence, using his psychoanalytic training to attempt to make sense out of his experience and, by implication, the experience of others. His books will be an invaluable aid to those who wish to learn what it means to be a "survivor". --Book jacket