The Dentist of Auschwitz

In 1941 Berek Jakubowicz (now Benjamin Jacobs) was deported from his Polish village and remained a prisoner of the Reich until the final days of the war. His possession of a few dental tools and rudimentary skills saved his life. Jacobs helped assemble V1 and V2 rockets in Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau; spent a year and a half in Auschwitz, where he was forced to remove gold teeth from corpses; and survived the RAF attack on three ocean liners turned prison camps in the Bay of Lubeck. This is his story.

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• Title : The Dentist of Auschwitz
• Pub. Date : January 2001
• Author : Benjamin Jacobs
• Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
• ISBN-13 : 9780813190129
• ISBN : 0813190126

Publishers Weekly

Jacobs, a Polish Jew, was a first-year dental student before he spent five years in Nazi extermination camps, including Auschwitz. Here, he vividly recalls that time, during which his elementary professional skills enabled him to practice primitive dentistry on inmates and SS officers alike, as well as to obey orders to extract gold teeth from corpses after gassing. Jacobs's understated tone conveys all the more forcefully the daily horror of camp life: bitter cold, near starvation, the smell of burning human flesh. Worst of all, notes the author, born Berek Jakubowicz, Auschwitz became a perverted ``way of life'' as he tried to survive it. Jacobs, who now practices dentistry in Boston, is a compelling witness. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Dec.)

Jacobs tells of his deportation from his Polish village and his imprisonment in Nazi labor and concentration camps. As a dental student, he was able to survive his four-year ordeal in Buchenwald, Dora-Mitelbau, and Auschwitz by working on the teeth of inmates and SS officers. He was one of 1,600 prisoners who survived bombing at sea when prisoners were herded onto German ocean liners and sunk. Includes b&w photos.