The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story by Patrica Posner

Author : Patricia Posner
Title : The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story
Published : 2017
Publisher : Crux Publishing
Pages : 257
Genre : Biography

   The Pharmacist of Auschwitz is the little known story of Victor Capesius, a Bayer pharmaceutical salesman from Roumania who, at the age of 35, joined the Nazi SS in 1943 and quickly became the chief pharmacist at the largest death camp, Auschwitz. Based in part on previously classified documents, Patricia Posner exposes Capesius’s reign of terror at the camp, his escape from justice, fuelled in part by his theft of gold ripped from the mouths of corpses, and how a handful of courageous survivors and a single brave prosecutor finally brought him to trial for murder twenty years after the end of the war.

   There has been a great deal written about Auschwitz, both about the people who where sent there and also those who worked behind its barbwire fences. Certain names will always stand out even if you are skimming the text. Capesius is at least for me one that I had not heard before and for the most part, why would you? The pharmacist would seem to be very low down on the list of people who would be searched out for. Surely some jobs were as simple as they sound? But what Posner reveals is that no matter the job title all who worked there had a certain amount of blood on their hands and that a title can hide a great deal.

   This was a book that does it's best to address something that for the most part people try and overlook. We wish to see the workforce of Auschwitz as a band of monsters and demons, some otherworldly species. The problem with this is, in my opinion, it takes away the human element. What these people chose to do is beyond my comprehension. At no point would I want to imagine doing what they did. But these people did it and as photos show many still went out at the end of the day with smiles on there faces. What this author sets out to do is show how people like Capesius went from the man who lived next door to picking who would live and die as the poured out of those cattle carts. It's interesting to see how this man went from what was a relatively benign position to being this twisted version of himself. Even now I couldn't find any remorse for this man. I realize that each step that leads him to his final position at times seems small. But to me, it seems he could have stopped, walked away. But once again position, ego, and money lead him further and further away from what was right. 

   What this book goes into great length about is what happen to him after the camp was liberated. The author must have done a great deal of research into what it was like for these masters of death once the walls came down. It astounds me how time and again mistakes where made. Some can be put down to the chaos that followed, between burnt documents and the reliance of witnesses things slipped through the cracks. If not for the efforts of a few I think a greater number would have gotten away with there wartime activities. She also shows just how closely the event at Auschwitz were linked into big business. How not only did many of these become happy participants in the extermination of countless lives, but that after the war little was done to them. Overall I was left feeling defeated and worn down by what I was reading. I am not so naive to think that every Nazi was going to be prosecuted for there horrors they perpetrated. But the actual number is so low that it leaves you feeling somewhat despondent.  

   It is in thanks to people like Posner that these people will have to serve some form of justice. Should anyone choose to look the up there names will forever be linked to the crimes they committed. What always astounds me is the sheer banality of how these people reflect on what they did. Maybe it is a way to live with what they did. In their own minds, they have rewritten their actions. Downplayed the parts they played or maybe they just never cared. Any form of empathy with the people in their charge was either left at the door or drummed out of them. It is a good thing that books like this exist. Posner has shone a light into every dark corner that Capesius tried to hide, to reveal not only his actions but also the very essence of his soul.