Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers

Filip Muller was born on January 3, 1922 and he grew up in Sered, Czechoslovak Republic. He was deported to Auschwitz in mid 1942, one of the earliest Holocaust tarnsports to Auschwitz. He was employed as a forced worker at Auschwitz I and later worked at the IG farben factory in Auschwitz-Monowitz. Starting in July of 1943, he worked at the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkeneau. Here, Filip gathered evidence of the horrors he had witnessed in the gas chambers and crematoria and he obtained a plan to stop what was happening. He gave his evidence to his fellow inmates, Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, who escaped from Auschwitz-Birkeneau in 1944. Shortly afterwards, they produced the Auschwitz protocols based on evidence of Nazi activities and plans at Auschwitz-Birkeneau, which had partially been gathered by Filip. In January of 1945, Filip was forced to be a part of a Nazi death march, Todesmarsch, to Mauthausen camp where he was then sent to Gunskirchen subcamp nearby. He was then liberated by the Allies in early May of 1945. Filip gave speeches about his experiences at the Weiner Library in the 1950’s, at the second Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt/Main in 1964, and to Claude Lanzmann for his documentary film Shoah (1985). He published a memoir of his time in Auschwitz in 1979. He went on to live in Prague and Germany. He died on November 9, 2013 in Mannheim, Germany.