How long does it take to read Inside the Gas Chambers?
Shlomo Venezia
Inside the Gas Chambers by Shlomo Venezia takes about 3 hours 42 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 42 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2009. 202 pages, about 55,550 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 10 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 42 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 19 minutes |
The page count is the median across 1 edition, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
This is a unique, eye-witness account of everyday life right at the heart of the Nazi extermination machine. Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a 'Sonderkommando', without realising what this entailed. He soon found himself a member of the 'special unit' responsible for removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burning their bodies. Dispassionately, he details the grim round of daily tasks, evokes the terror inspired by the man in charge of the crematoria, 'Angel of Death' Otto Moll, and recounts the attempts made by some of the prisoners to escape, including the revolt of October 1944. It is usual to imagine that none of those who went into the gas chambers at Auschwitz ever emerged to tell their tale - but, as a 'Sonderkommando', Shlomo Venezia was given this horrific privilege. He knew that, having witnessed the unspeakable, he in turn would probably be eliminated by the SS in case he ever told his tale. He survived: this is his story.
Subjects: Auschwitz (Concentration camp), Jews, Interviews, Birkenau (Concentration camp), Gas chambers, Personal narratives
