First One In, Last One Out cover art

First One In, Last One Out

Auschwitz Survivor 31321: A Memoir

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First One In, Last One Out

By: Marilyn Shimon
Narrated by: Sarah Borges
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About this listen

The horrifying true story of one of the first eight men to enter Auschwitz.

Growing up in New York, Marilyn Shimon often visited her uncle in California. She saw his scars, gaped at his 31321 tattoo and listened to his horrific stories of surviving the Holocaust. However, she could not relate to the suffering he endured or understand the significance of his accounts until now.

In this grisly memoir, Marilyn resurrects Murray Scheinberg's stories of six hellish years in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The Polish Jew was one of the first eight men to enter Auschwitz, as a political prisoner in 1940, and one of the last to escape Dachau. Shockingly frank and truly harrowing, this is a gripping first-hand account of the horror and degradation of the camps, from the first day to the very last.

©2020 Marilyn Shimon (P)2020 W F Howes 20th Century Military Modern World War Holocaust Prisoners of War

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Critic reviews

“It is both an uplifting tale and a sorry one about human nature in the face of evil.” (Abraham H. Foxman, Anti-Defamation League)
All stars
Most relevant  
account of what happened and ordealed to one person during World War 2. The narrator was very good.

Excellent....

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This was quite a gritty true story, but that said all these stories need to be told and remembered, so this can and will never be repeated.

My only criticism is the narrator is not best suited to this. I feel it should have been a male narrator, and secondly her intonation was very odd finishing quite harrowing sentences on a high note or making some of the statements a little superfluous.

Thank you to all those people who keep these testimonies alive and fresh in paire do that se might learn of man’s inhumanity to man and never repeat this horrific moment of history.

Mans inhumanity

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Spoilt by the naration. Not a patch on the harrowing suffering told in If This Is A Man by Mr Primo Levi or Five Chimneys by Olga Lengyl.

Spoilt by the narator

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Great story of a harrowing ordeal. I’ve read many of these types of books yet this poor man has lived through it more than most and managed to survive. It is portrayed well and is quite a short read considering he spent more than 6 years at these camps yet it holds enough details for the reader to understand.

Great story of a harrowing ordeal

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A good book and inspiring story, but I am not a fan of this narrator.

Gritty

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Book was really good.
But the narrater took me out of the story a lot

Very good book, annoying narrater

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I have a keen interest in listening to the stories of survivors of the holocaust.
This is well written, well read and gives a very strong message about survival.
I thoroughly recommend.

Important story that should be listened to.

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This had my enotions from the beginning, tears, and hope of new beginnings. A book everyone should read.

thought provoking

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Whoever was in charge of arranging for the selection of the narrator and subsequent recording of this audiobook needs to be fired with immediate effect. The narrator would be ideally suited to reading children’s stories, particularly for pre-teens. I kept expecting Harry Potter et al to show up and battle Voldemort on the Auschwitz parade square. She had an unbelievably inappropriate, often cheerful, inflection reading some harrowing recollections and often demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of what she was reading. The book itself is okay, massively exaggerated with gaping holes, but okay. Some of it is just pure fiction, possibly because the subject dictated his story when very old. Facts such as ‘bumping into a member of he Sonderkommando’ in the the general camp population and learning of the gassing and cremations just did not happen, those working in those facilities were strictly segregated from all others. However, all at Auschwitz knew what was occurring in the 5 gas chambers and crematoria. Other elements are clearly just nonsense, misremembered or exaggerations. The self importance of the subject was laughable at times. He made himself out to be one of the most successful businessmen in pre-war Poland, loved and lauded by all. We never found out what happened to his family, he didn’t seem too concerned. He mentions at one point basically hoping to see his family on the ramp at Birkenau as he wanted to see them, then mentioning almost in passing that perhaps that wouldn’t be so great after all as they would then be off to be murdered. He was 34 years old at the end of the war, but huge emphasis was put on his service in the military in the late 1920s (he was a teenager) and his return as a heroic veteran of National Service as an officer in circa 1930-32. Apparently he was a hugely well thought of man and a colonel in the Polish army. This was referred to many times and is clearly just a lie. No army in the world promotes a nonprofessional teenage officer 6 or 7 times in the space of perhaps 3 years to the rank of colonel. The inaccuracies, exaggerations and blatant mistruths made me mistrust many other so called facts in the book. Lots of the content was simply untrue and unbelievable for anybody with a reasonable knowledge of those times and the practices and events that took place in the horror of Auschwitz. A shame. I’m sure his American family with no real knowledge lapped up his narcissistic tall tales though and accepted his recollections without question. Not a book for anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the history of those times.

Exaggerated Experiences, Awful Narration.

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Good story line but the lady’s voice is soo irritating, she either talks really fast or really slow, I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more if it was read by someone else

Awful reader

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