1945. The Kapo of his command, Bohdan Komarnicki, arrived at KL Mauthausen via the same evacuation transport.
Yet it is impossible, based on archival documentation, to recreate the camp fate of Gita (Gisela) Furman (Furmanova). We do not find any surviving documents with her personal data or relating to number 34902 issued in the women's series. Nevertheless, it should be ruled out that a prisoner who arrived at the camp on 13 April 1942 could receive such a high number, which was actually issued a year later, on 11 February 1943, in a group of Jewish women brought to the camp by the RSHA transport from the Netherlands (from the Westerbork camp). It is, however, a fact that on 13 April 1942, a female transport from Slovakia arrived at Auschwitz - but they were given numbers from 4761 to 5203. Therefore, Gita Furman was either brought to the camp on a different date or received a different number than that indicated in the book.
The lack of documents makes it impossible to give a definitive answer to the discrepancy. According to her own testimony from the Shoah Visual Archive, her number was 4562. It was issued in the camp on 3 April 1942. On that day 997 Jewish women from Slovakia arrived – they received numbers 3763-3812 and 3814-4760.
The results of the work of historians of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and literature on objects created over the years allow us to verify several other misleading statements contained in Heather Morris' book. Doctor Mengele did not conduct sterilization experiments on men but performed experiments on twins and dwarves on the inheritance of certain traits, as well as research on the Noma disease.
During their revolt, the Sonderkommando prisoners partially burned down one crematoria (the book says two were blown up) and the female prisoners who delivered the gunpowder to the prisoners did not carry it under their fingernails.
It is impossible that Lale managed to get penicillin for Gila, who was infected with typhus, in January 1943. During that period the production and usage of this drug was still in the phase of research. This antibiotic became widely accessible only after the war.
As regards tattooing of the Roma, we find no documents suggesting that children were exempted from this obligation; accounts indicate that children were tattooed as well as adults.
The account of the murder of prisoners in a bus allegedly changed to a gas chamber does not find confirmation in any sources. This scene brings to mind movable gas chambers, but they were used in Kulmhof (Chełmno), not in Auschwitz. Furthermore, the statement that the SS men allegedly poured a poisonous liquid from a canister through a hole on the roof into the bus is simply false.
It is also unlikely that Stefan Baretzki led Eisenberg to the gas chamber to identify the bodies of two victims mistakenly marked with the same number. First of all, a prisoner who was not a member of the Sonderkommando had no right to enter the area near the crematoria. Secondly, the numbers of prisoners sentenced to death during selection in hospitals were written down again in the camp, and their identities previously verified before entering the gas chamber.
Also full of contradictions is the scene in which two young prisoners appear in the tattooist’s room asking for help for an accidental fugitive. It is difficult to determine whether the scene takes place at night ('knock on the door wakes Lale from a deep sleep'; 'Floodlights sweep the area of the camp') or during the day ('Lale makes his way to the administrative block' (...) '"Good day, Bella"'). Furthermore, it is impossible for a would-be fugitive to be hanged the next day, to roam about the camp freely and move to another section (such prisoners remained in the camp detention until execution). Within this period, numbers were tattooed on all Jewish prisoners who arrived at Auschwitz.
The transport list with Ludovit Eisenberg's name (number 466)