The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story

Patricia Posner

Jul 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Julian Elfer

About this audiobook

The Pharmacist of Auschwitz is the little-known story of Victor Capesius, a Bayer pharmaceutical salesman from Romania who, at the age of thirty-five, joined the Nazi SS in 1943 and quickly became the chief pharmacist at the largest death camp, Auschwitz. Based in part on previously classified documents, Patricia Posner exposes Capesius's reign of terror at the camp, his escape from justice, and how a handful of courageous survivors and a single brave prosecutor finally brought him to trial for murder twenty years after the end of the war. The Pharmacist of Auschwitz is much more, though, than a personal account of Capesius. It provides a spellbinding glimpse inside the devil's pact made between the Nazis and Germany's largest conglomerate, IG Farben, and its Bayer pharmaceutical subsidiary. The story is one of murder and greed, with its roots in the dark heart of the Holocaust. Set against a backdrop ranging from Hitler's war to conquer Europe to the Final Solution to postwar Germany's tormented efforts to confront its dark past, Posner shows the appalling depths to which ordinary men descend when they are unrestrained by conscience or any sense of morality. Contains mature themes.

Ratings and reviews

Fantastic narrative about someone who you wouldn't have thought much about relative to the holocaust. I wish the author would have spent more time discussing how she did her research. As the events leading up to the trials happened before I was born, I was surprised at how relatively recent the trials were (1960's-1980's) and found it disheartening that the German people still embraced these criminals.

Absolutely fantastic, really enjoyed it. Well researched and very well written.

Superb and exciting. Couldnt put it down

About the author

Patricia Posner is a British-born writer who has collaborated with her husband, the author Gerald Posner, on twelve nonfiction books. Her work has appeared, among other places, in the Miami Herald, the Daily Beast, and Salon.

British-born Julian Elfer is an award-winning New York City-based actor and audiobook narrator. With over 100 titles to his credit, Julian brings a unique facility for characterization in fiction and an empathy for the personalities and events of the past.