Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz

Olga Lengyel was born on October 19, 1908 in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania (now Romania). She had studied medicine in Cluj, which is where she met her husband. They had 2 children and opened a medical sanitorium together. In May of 1944, Olga, her husband, her parents and her 2 sons were forced into a cattle car and were taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Olga had been the only member of her family to survive Auschwitz. After being liberated after her 7 months in the camp, Olga moved to New York and published her book Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor;s True Story of Auschwitz in 1947. This was one of the earliest books to depict the true horros of the Auschwitz camp. About 30 years later, her vivid descriptions of this death camp became one of the testimonies that inspired William Styron’s award winning novel, Sophie’s Choice. Eventually, Olga remarried to Gustav Aguire and they moved to Havana together only to be impacted by Castro’s communist revolution. So, they moved back to New York. Here, Olga founded the Memeorial Libray and Art Collection of Second World War, which was chartered by the University of the State of New York. The Olga Lengyel Institute, which is part of Olga’s legacy, carries on her mission of educating future generations about the Holocaust, other genocides and human rights. Olga died on April 15, 2001 in New York.