1
For my presentation. I chose to talk about the Holocaust.
I had no idea this project would be so oppressive, so emotionally draining, and so very sad. Just reading the unbearable circumstances these innocent people had to bear literally made me weep. The word "holocaust" originally meant an offering to God that was entirely consumed by fire. It now refers to any large area or great number of people destroyed by fire. Spelled with capital letter, it is the period during which 6 million of the Jews of Europe were killed, and most of their bodies burned--consumed by fire. I visited the reality of this nightmare as I read the of the unspeakable crimes that were committed against these defenseless Jews.
These are eyewitness accounts of life and death in the Nazi concentration camps of the Third Reich.......shocking, touching, moving, and unforgettable. These are stories of unbelievable horror, unbearable suffering, and incredible courage. Millions perished under circumstances of unimaginable degradation, their voices silenced, seemingly forever. Fortunately, the war ended before the Nazis could finish their hellish job, and thousands of prisoners survived to tell us their own stories as well as those whose lives had been so cruelly and so casually terminated. These horrible accounts you are about to hear come from prisoners telling of the deportation, their life at the camps, and the experiments and executions they witnessed.
2
Jews were "deported" or transported by train to six camps. The Germans usually told the Jews they were being resettled in the East or sent to labor camps so that they would not panic or resist.
"The trainload of prisoners carried between 1,000 - 2,000 men, women, children, old people......among them were mothers carrying newborn babies, frail old people on stretchers, seriously wounded people, and small children."
"The guards stripped us completely naked and squeezed 140 persons into one boxcar. These were the famous WWI boxcars they said could hold 40 men or 8 horses. It was sheer hell."
"The boxcars were thoroughly sealed."
"We couldn't sit, we couldn't even crouch."
"What I ended up doing was spending the night on one leg, since there wasn't enough room to stand on both."
"In the middle of the car was a bucket that served as a chamber pot; in a few hours it was full to overflowing and gave off a terrible odor. After that, people had no choice but to relieve themselves directly on the floor, and that meant that we spent the trip enveloped in a poisonous stench."
"The trip took 10 days and 9 nights, during which we were given bread and soup only twice."
"All of us were racked with thirst. I saw some of my comrades pushed to the point of drinking their own urine, others to licking the sweat off the backs of fellow prisoners, while still others tried to catch the occasional drops of water that condensed on the walls of the boxcar."
"We were half dead from thirst. In Breslau we begged the nurses of the German Red Cross for water but they remained deaf to our plea."
"At every stop you could hear voices begging from the boxcars begging for air. Without fail a German officer would reply: 'You have everything you deserve.'"
In my boxcar, 82 out of 126 people were dead. By the time we arrived at the camp, 896 people had died."
3
After arriving at the "extermination camps", the victims went through a selection process. Men were separated from the women and children. I quote.....
"They separated the women, the children, and the old people from the rest of the deportees, and that was the last we every heard of them. I think that my wife, who was among them, went with them to the gas chamber."
Usually within minutes after entering the gas chamber, everyone inside was dead from lack of oxygen.
Victims who were spared immediate death by being selected for labor were stripped of their identity and led to the camp.
"As we were led from the train station to the camp, we were beaten with clubs and menaced by dogs."
"In spite of our weakness, we had to travel the 5 km from the station to the camp."
"The distance had to be covered running barefoot because the guards had stolen our shoes. Those who could not run fell behind and were finished off with clubs."
"The moment we set foot inside the camp we were given a tattoo on the left forearm. I was branded with a red hot iron."
"Blows to the head and beatings were daily occurrences that no one looked upon as anything out of the ordinary."
One of the guards took pleasure in herding the prisoners out of their cells and making them kneel until their heads touched the ground. Then he would stomp on their heads with his iron-heeled boots until blood gushed from their noses and ears."
"I suffered the following torture: stuck with red-hot pins all over my body, total dislocation of both legs which resulted in torn ligaments. Scars from these various tortures were still quite visible nine months later........At the time I was tortured, I was forced to undress."
"I was hung by my thumbs and beaten on the feet; my head was immersed in water and my private parts were struck with needles. My back was tied to a barrel while someone pulled at my limbs and tried to tear them apart."
4
The Germans conducted medical experiments for which they resolved several barracks. The guinea pigs were, of course, the prisoners. It is important to hear what I am saying here....we, the human beings were guinea pigs.
"Instead of experimenting on guinea pigs, rabbits, and mice, they used humans because they thought it was more exciting."
"There was a compound at Auschwitz that was especially
reserved for medical experiments on women who were chosen from
among the healthiest. They had their ovaries, etc..reproductive organs removed
without any anesthetic."
"Early in 1942, the Germans began performing experiments by injecting air into the veins. They wanted to find out how much compressed air could be injected into the veins without causing an embolism."
One day German nurses came to the Cellblock 10 and asked, "How many of you have trouble sleeping?" Several young women raised their hands. Eighteen of them were given more or less strong doses of white powder we didn't recognize but which we took to be morphine. Of the 18, ten were dead by the next morning. It was obviously an experiment."
"Blood was taken from countless prisoners against their will and used in transfusions for German soldiers. When a prisoner resisted such bloodletting, the doctor or the orderly would punish the reluctant donor so mercilessly that the poor prisoner would have to be carried out on a strecher. This treatment was repeated until the prisoner gave in."
"The Germans experimented in shock treatments on the mentally ill. This method consisted of placing paddles on either the temples or the forehead and the neck and letting an electric current pass through. The result of this experiment was catastrophic. A great many deaths resulted."
Brutal and horrid executions were carried out everyday as a way to control the population and as a way for guards to receive bonuses.
"According to camp regulation, for every execution, a guard was to receive a bonus consisting of 1 ounce of brandy, 3 cigarettes, and 1 bratwurst."
5
"One day the Block leader selected ten orderlies and sent us running. When we passed a courtyard, I was appalled at what I saw. There, like a stack of firewood, was a pile of bodies six feet high. They had been stacked in a certain way so that (the blood would drain off into grooves that led away from the building. But the blood couldn't drain off entirely and had formed a pool that was ankle deep."
"I picked up a body of a young girl. I drug her by the legs in order to get her to the van, but I shrank back with horror, for all her thigh muscles had been cut away to the bone."
On one particular spring day in 1942, 6,600 people arrived all at once at the camp. Two days later, they were shot. On November 3, 1943, 18,000 were shot, including 8,000 camp inmates and 10,000 people brought in from other camps. Three days before this mass murder ocured, huge ditches had been dug in the open country behind the crematory."
"The number 26 million represents approximately the total number of people, POW's, and political prisoners whom the Germans caused to die from hunger, cold, sickness, torture, medical experiments, and other means of extermination, in all camps in Germany and in occupied territories."
For me, vivid, firsthand accounts heighten the reality of this experience in ways no third-person narrative can capture. Even when victims are at a loss for words, their struggle to find language to express the unspeakable is, in itself, mute testimony to the ordeal eteched forever on their memories. And just like the tattoos so many survivors wear on their forearms, memories cannot be erased. But, then, hope lives when people remember. Tell them we remember.
Inside the Concentration Camps, Eugene Aroneanu, Praeger Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, 1996
Tell Them We Remember, Susan D. Bachrach, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, MA, 1994
Miriam-
I wrote this and presented it to my Humanities class. I wanted you to read this and tell me what you think. I am so thankful I am going to get to know you better. Your cheerful spirit despite all you've been through just makes me smile.
