It is safe to say that readers who build their awareness of the crimes committed there based solely on contemporary novels will not acquire any reliable knowledge that would allow them to understand what actually happened and how and why it happened in Auschwitz. The reader will instead create a false, stereotyped, and imbued with macabre yet unauthentic incidents, an entirely false image.
Falsifications are commonplace not only in descriptions of such complex phenomena, the correct grasp of which requires in-depth knowledge but also, something that is already difficult to justify, in terms of using known or easily verifiable dates. The author of the novel Black and Purple claims that the massacre in Babi Yar took place in the autumn of 1940, while in fact, it happened a year later; it wrongly states the date of the first transport of women to Auschwitz (which is particularly appalling as Helena Citronova, whose story was the basis for writing the book, arrived on this transport). It goes on to describe Maria Mandel's participation in the events of June 1942, when indeed she arrived at the camp four months later, in October 1942. It wrongly dates Konrad Morgen's visit to Auschwitz (it was 1943, not 1944).
Mario Escobar states that in June 1943, the conductor of the women's camp orchestra was Alma Rosé, who indeed was brought to Auschwitz in the second half of July 1943 and only after a few weeks did she join the orchestra. The main character of the book Angel of Auschwitz claims that in March 1945, during the evacuation from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, female prisoners were taken to the gas chambers, which is clearly impossible.
Such errors in dates and other factual errors (such as claims that Dr Mengele conducted his medical experiments on prisoners in Dachau, that records of people murdered in gas chambers were made in Auschwitz, or information that propaganda films were made in Birkenau, in the family camp for Jews from the Theresienstadt Ghetto) are tingling in these novels. Incorrect information also appears in almost every passage in which the authors refer to the number of victims. Some of the books in question leave the nationality of the camp victims and their executioners unspecified (or intentionally undefined). Dempsey, while listing the categories of prisoners in his novel, omits the Poles, who were second only to Jews in terms of the number of prisoners and people murdered. Escobar states that the BIId section of Birkenau was a camp for Jews, men, while in fact, it was a camp for prisoners of all nationalities, a significant percentage of whom were Polish political prisoners. The omission of Poles (the first and until 1942 the most represented group) and other non-Jewish victims of the camp, which is a common feature of most of the novels in question, may lead to their gradual exclusion from memory about Auschwitz.
The lack of an exact name for the victims of the camp is accompanied by a parallel blurring of the category of perpetrators, who are generally referred to as "SS men" or "Nazis." The book, Angel of Auschwitz, contains a piece of history falsifying information stating that the cries of SS men in German and Polish could be heard on the ramp. For a reader with no historical knowledge, this sentence may suggest that the camp crew consisted of Poles, which is certainly not true; the SS men were solely of German nationality.
It is natural and actually difficult to criticise that the authors introduce fictional elements while writing their novels. Nevertheless, unless we are dealing with a fantasy novel, it is essential to preserve authenticity, which gives the reader the right to believe that the described events might happen in all probability. In general, the reader's experience and basic knowledge of the social world are sufficient tools to verify this authenticity. It is slightly different with regard to the reality of KL Auschwitz. The camp reality was so different from what we know of everyday life that separating what seems impossible yet real from what sounds likely but may not have occurred is extremely difficult when one only has common knowledge. Hence, such fragments which appear in the novels are a kind of litmus test of the author's knowledge and discernment. All the books discussed here are full of such scenes (or very many), sometimes minor incidents, and sometimes crucial for the narrative of events, which in all probability could not have happened in Auschwitz as we know from documents, scientific studies and accounts of former prisoners.