SS StandartenfĂŒhrer Dr. Heinrich Mueller kept a diary while stationed at Auschwitz. He decided who would live and who would die. What horrors did his diary hold?
Containing many little-known facts about the Holocaust and the rise of Neo-Nazism in the United States, this fictional story has many twisting plots, all spinning out of control toward an unexpected, climactic ending.
This book contains graphic descriptions of what happened in Auschwitz. Words can never begin to describe genocide on this unconscionable scale. The book is a work of fiction, and most characters are fictional. However, some characters are real people who participated in the Holocaust, beginning with Hitler. You will read his words from Mein Kampf and the inflammatory rhetoric in his speeches, and I include many photographs of the other Nazi participants, as I want their images to sear into your consciousness so that when you hear their names, you will realize they were real people. However, they weren't ordinary people â they were monsters.
You will also meet four fictional characters. This Holocaust Rubik Cube of characters challenges you to rotate and turn the puzzle trying to solve it, but is it solvable? Perhaps we'll never know.
SS StandartenfĂŒhrer Dr. Heinrich Mueller kept a diary while stationed at Auschwitz. He decided who would live and who would die. What horrors did his diary hold?
Containing many little-known facts about the Holocaust and the rise of Neo-Nazism in the United States, this fictional story has many twisting plots, all spinning out of control toward an unexpected, climactic ending.
This book contains graphic descriptions of what happened in Auschwitz. Words can never begin to describe genocide on this unconscionable scale. The book is a work of fiction, and most characters are fictional. However, some characters are real people who participated in the Holocaust, beginning with Hitler. You will read his words from Mein Kampf and the inflammatory rhetoric in his speeches, and I include many photographs of the other Nazi participants, as I want their images to sear into your consciousness so that when you hear their names, you will realize they were real people. However, they weren't ordinary people â they were monsters.
You will also meet four fictional characters. This Holocaust Rubik Cube of characters challenges you to rotate and turn the puzzle trying to solve it, but is it solvable? Perhaps we'll never know.
âEinige können Mich als Monster zu sehen, ein Massenmord an unschuldigen MĂ€nnern, Frauen und Kinder, aber sie werden mich nie verstehen dass ich nur Befehle befolgt. Bevor ich sterbe, muss ich die Sache richtig zu stellen. Dr. Heinrich Mueller.â
(Some may see me as a monster, a mass murderer of innocent men, women, and children, but they will never understand I was following orders. Before I die, I must set the record straight. Dr. Heinrich Mueller)
With these defiant yet chilling words, handwritten in meticulous German script on a note stuffed into his diary, my search for SS StandartenfĂŒhrer Dr. Heinrich Mueller ended. However, my journey to discover the psyche of this mysterious and secretive doctor had just begun. It was a journey that took me to places I could never begin to imagine. It is a trip I want to share with you â a journey back in time we all need to take lest we forget the ghosts of Auschwitz.
My name is Philip Sherman Mygatt. Ever since I helped Mira Kabliski Cohen write her memoirs Innocence Lost â A Childhood Stolen, I have wondered about her mysterious Auschwitz savior, Dr. Heinrich Mueller. He had taken her out of the Auschwitz selection line on her way to the gas chambers and raised her as his daughter. Listening to her incredible story made me increasingly intrigued by the man she loved and also feared. Her conflicted feelings for the man were evident as she spoke lovingly of him in one sentence and then reviled him in the next. Talking about Dr. Mueller often brought her to tears. Then, we would have to stop and change the subject until she was ready to continue.
When I asked her to describe him, she often faltered as though she was looking for the right words. But, usually, sheâd raise her hands in frustration and smile. Perhaps it was her way of letting me know she was still fighting the demons that plagued her; the anguish of right versus wrong, the failure to accept who Dr. Mueller was, and the inability to put him and his actions into perspective. She never really knew the actual Heinrich Mueller. She only knew what he wanted her to know; it was part of his game to survive. That's the one word we agreed described him the best; like her, he was a survivor.
After Mira and I had finished our many interviews and I began transcribing and editing them, we kept in touch by telephone and email. Sadly, I never saw her again, as she died before I finished the book. It was challenging to move forward without her, but I completed the project and moved on. However, the word "survivor" incessantly haunted me; was Dr. Mueller still alive?
The last time Mira had seen him was before she and her late husband, Meyer, had emigrated to Israel in the early '50s. At the time, Dr. Mueller (now called Father Anthony) was the parish priest in a Catholic church in a small village in southwestern Bavaria. When I asked her if she had kept in touch with him, sheâd raise her hands in frustration and smile. It was a temptation she had struggled with all her life. She assumed they had said everything they needed to say in their last conversation, and there was no need to continue their relationship. However, I could sense she had probably wanted to stay in touch with him throughout the years but had refrained.
After her unexpected passing, I often reflected on their curious relationship. It made me sad she had never known the real Heinrich Mueller. He was as much a mystery to her in her old age as he had been during her childhood.
I wanted to drop everything and chase after this elusive man, but priorities, projects, and family always got in the way until a newspaper article caught my attention. That's when I read a news article about Johann Breyer, a retired toolmaker in Philadelphia. He was in custody after being accused of accessory to murder as a Nazi guard at Auschwitz and Buchenwald during World War II. At 89, he was the oldest person in the United States arrested for ties to the Third Reich. Germany had issued a warrant for his arrest, and the U.S. Justice Department had tried to deport him for years. Could Dr. Mueller, masquerading as Father Anthony, still be alive? Now, I had to find out!
Philip Mygatt claims to have found an old diary in a bookstore in Munich. Astonishingly, it was the diary of SS StandartenfĂŒhrer Dr Heinrich Mueller, a Nazi doctor complicit in the execution of millions of Jews at Auschwitz during World War II. Inside Auschwitz - A Death Camp Doctor's Diary is the story of how Mygatt liaised with an elderly German professor, who translated the diary for him. The story is historical fiction, but it features some real and well-known characters. It quotes extensively from the diary, telling Muellerâs life story, while also telling the remarkable story of the translator, Dr Walter Freedman, who, after being arrested and incarcerated as a Nazi Prisoner of War in the U.S.A., became a U.S. citizen and a patriot.Â
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Muellerâs diary entries are, as one would expect, deeply disturbing, yet also fascinating. From the earlier entries, we learn the kind of man Mueller was before the war. We see what shaped his views, and how tragedy changed him. The last entries, in particular, shed an interesting light on a man most would assume was just pure evil. Combined with extracts from Withold Pileckiâs Report, and from Hitlerâs Mein Kampf, Muellerâs diary entries expose the conditions in Germany after World War I that motivated people to support Hitler and the general sentiment of the people towards Jews. Mygatt takes his readers into a dark period of world history, bringing them face to face with the horrific conditions in Auschwitz and the terrible suffering of those who were not immediately 'processed' to the gas chambers. Muellerâs diary details the construction of the camp, the transportation and treatment of prisoners, and the precise methods of execution. Readers join Jews making the death march, and thinly clad skeletons working in freezing conditions and battling, despite disease and a starvation diet, to stay alive and maintain hope.Â
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It may be difficult, at times, to distinguish fact from fiction in this extraordinarily lengthy novel, and reading page after page of the thoughts and acts of monsters is tiring. Some of the sentence structures, while not necessarily incorrect, are awkward. But lovers of language may appreciate that many paragraphs are written in German. These paragraphs are translated for the reader, but Mygatt explains that some words have multiple possible meanings and accurate translation is sometimes challenging.Â
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Inside Auschwitz - A Death Camp Doctor's Diary is deeply confronting. It contains graphic descriptions and exposes little-known facts about the Holocaust, and also the rise of Neo-Nazism in the United States. It is rich in detail and extensively researched to ensure accuracy. Some readers may find it uncomfortably verbose, as itâs over 500 pages long. It might read better with a few thousand words cut, by reducing the conversation between the author, the translator, and the authorâs wife and repetitious descriptions of scenery. The ending is surprising and a little disconcerting, probably intended to entice the reader to read a sequel. Despite mild curiosity, I will resist. Mygattâs writing style doesnât appeal. Nonetheless, this a book well worth reading for anyone keen to understand in greater depth what occurred in Germany in the post-World War I era and during World War II and to gain greater insight into the horrors of Auschwitz. As an expose of history, it excels.Â