“We had been running for about 100 metres, when a strange flat-roofed building loomed up before us.” – Filip Müller
In the distance, with the air
above the stacks still,
ovens stood in industrial
innocence within their brick
and mortar womb.
The furnace lay cold and gray
with its cast iron door swung open,
and waited to receive the next Jew –
to embrace them in its crucible heart.
In silent slavery and in slumber
the bodies kept flowing past
Filip like a swollen stream.
Ice and snow singed his feet.
The inhumanity of the inanimate.
About Filip Müller
Deported from Sered, Czechoslovakia, Filip Muller (#29236) worked for three years as a prisoner in the “Sonderkommando” in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz. Every day he saw the flames extinguished of many, now forgotten, candles. Frequently writing notes about his experiences, Müller spent years after his liberation trying to educate all those who would listen to his account but he did not compile and publish his testimony until 1970 under the title Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Ivan R. Dee, Publishers: Chicago (IL), 1979). Müller has lived in Western Europe since 1969.
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