Sima Vaisman: A Jewish Doctor in Auschwitz
Vaisman, Sima. A Jewish Doctor in Auschwitz: The Testimony of Sima Vaisman (Hoboken, NJ: Melville House, 2005)
It is difficult to discuss memoirs, particularly ones written in one language and read in another, and tales about the Holocaust are perhaps impossible to judge impartially. The most one can reasonably do is discuss how the telling of a particular tale resonates with the reader, and to relate what the writer has done to increase one's understanding of modern history's most horrific event.
In taking us from Auschwitz to Ravensbruck, and finally to Neustadt for liberation by the advancing Soviet army, Vaisman has penned a memoir that easily stands aside other survivors' accounts of the Holocaust--such as Primo Levi's The Drowned and the Saved, and Elie Wiesel's Night. Her voice is less well-known that theirs, but it is no less powerful.
This book is even briefer than it appears; it weighs in at less than 100 pages, of which Vaisman's actual testimony constitutes barely half. Her story has weight beyond its page count, and her voice is not weakened by its succinctness. Serge Klarsfeld writes in the Introduction:
Sima's text deserves, despite its brevity, to be published in a book, since it so concisely reveals the conditions of the extermination of the Jews in this slaughterhouse that was Birkenau. Not only does Sima know how to explain how the concentration camp system functions, but her descriptions are haunting and unforgettable... (p. 14)
I can add little else, so here are some of Vaisman's words:
The sick are already naked, which eliminated the bother of undressing them. They are piled into gas chambers, we still hear a few cries, a few calls for help, a few names, which they shout out at the approach of death, and then, a silence, a profound silence, a silence of death floats over everything.... In the night, huge flames rise up from the chimneys, enormous fat flames, red, which cry out for revenge.... (p. 47)