I Am Silent As A Mouse

War! Horrid War! The atrocities of World War II that the Germans committed in the confines of their concentration camps are all but forgotten. The American novelist, travel writer and journalist Martha Gellhorn knew all too well about the atrocities that occurred at the infamous Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany. She gives an expository recount from the point of view of herself and the surviving prisoners of war. She details the prisoners’ stories and her own visit to the camp from after the Americans had liberated it from the Germans in 1945. Gellhorn does so with attention for detail and uses language techniques such as personification to bring the abhorrent scene to life in the reader’s mind. We also learn about the awful treatment of the prisoners and the abominable experiments the Germans conducted.

The readers of the article “Liberating the First Nazi Camp,” an interview with Jim Martin, WWII veteran will begin to understand the personal hardships that service members experienced through the war. In the given article the reader can begin to see just how bad the conditions where for people that opposed the Third Reich, and where thrown into these concentration camps. The interview also show the haste that the Nazis would get into when the Allied forces, leaving helpless victims in the gas chambers, hastily executing them via machine gun, and even storing the remains in warehouse to be disposed of at a later time. The article also shows a more human side of the rough and tough solider who literally had to do this depressing job every single

"If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like I would have eaten more. I wouldn't have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath..." (Gruener, 2). These are the words of Yanek Gruener looking back at what he had dealt with the past six years. The book, “Prisoner B-3087”, by Alan Gratz is based on a true story of a boy, Jack Gruener, who survived 10 concentration camps in six years. Yanek Gruener had went through way more than he would have ever imagined, beatings, starvation, death marches, and scarce food supply. However, he survived. Yanek could have never survived if it wasn't for his resourceful way of thinking, his courageous mindset, and the help from everyone else, including himself, through

The plane took off and were in the air leaving the place I had only ever known. I remember when my parents told me and my two brothers that we would be moving to the United states. At the time I didn’t know where we would end up or how we were even getting there. All I knew was I would be in a totally different landscape with a lot of ethnically different people whom I have never met or seen before.

Everyone has heard of the holocaust and learned about it in history class, but there is no way that anyone could even imagine how terrible it was unless they experienced it themselves. After reading, “The Boy on the Wooden Box”, by Leon Leyson, it is clear that the author’s tone throughout the story is one of pain and agony. The story Leon tells is about his family’s journey during the holocaust, and all the physical and emotional pain that they went through, but also how lucky they were to have survived.

Dear Mr. Wiesel, I have read your book ‘Night’ and I really like it. In fact, it's shed more light on things I didn't know about the Holocaust. I never fully grasped what people could actually go through and how much hurt they could go through before they break. You didn't break tho, you were able to stay strong and not let anything get to you. You may have changed while you were in that camp, Mr. Wiesel but most people wouldn't have made it out if they went through that today so in my eyes you are a hero, if you wouldn't have been strong I wouldn't have read this story and I wouldn't know how strong I have to be to get through life. If you can live through that I can live through anything, so thank you. I'm so very sorry that you went through

Over the past couple of week I have been reading the book Prisoner B-3087 which is a book about a Jewish boy named Yanek Gruener during WWII. Yanek was very young at the start of the war, around 10, and he lived in Poland his whole life in a flat apartment. He was growing up with Germans approaching him. His father always said that they would never reach them, but one day they did. The Nazis came marching in, took over the city and built a wall with gates so no one could leave. The let out all the non Jews and kept pushing more jewish families into the “Ghetto”. When the Ghetto started to fill up the Nazis would soon start killing people and taking them to the concentration camps. Yanek’s family soon started to be taken in trucks off to

I know that when I woke up I could smell the blood and rotting bodies in the air. The camp was quiet there was no one there. The camp was in a secluded wooded area and I could tell it had just rained. I looked in all of the women’s barracks to see if their was anyone still alive. At the look of each barrack with all the women and children lying their dead my heart sank deeper. I couldn’t wrap my head around how there was around a hundred thousand people staying there and I was the only known survivor. Before the war they all had families and jobs and now they lay here at my feet dead. I couldn’t bear to see the looks of anguish of the faces so I stopped looking. There was no food anywhere and I was exhausted. The soldiers thought everyone here was dead so they weren’t coming back so I had to find a way to escape. I started to walk into the woods. I ate some of the plants and berries along the way and tried to kill some smaller animals for meat. I finally made it out of the woods into a farmer's fields. Luckily, the farmer was Jewish and let me stay in his barn. He and his wife snuck food out to me as much as they could. Once I had regained my strength I left them, I was causing them more trouble than I was worth. I was sixteen years of age and ninety-three pounds. My shot wounds were starting to heal and I was starting to mentally recover. They told me the safest place to go was Israel. I took off with a sack of food a pair of shoes and two sets of clothes and the prayers from those two

Being a prisoner of war can change a person, dramastically. World war two, one of the most devastating wars; over fifty million people died, and yet this number is just a roundabout. One main factor, called the Holocaust, the extermination of six million Jews, gays, and anything German’s deemed unfit. Based on a true story, we venture through the mind of a young Jewish boy named Elie. Elie one day was taken from his home, and sent to a German concentration camp known as Auschwitz. Elie is soon to realize that this place is no joking matter. Through the process of selection, the disassemblement from his loved ones, and the deportation of saved ones to specialized camps, Elie questions his faith in God, himself, and his welfare of family members.

Has it ever dawned upon you how a twelve year old boy might have experienced the Holocaust? In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Mr. Wiesel told his story, leaving us with an astonishing and vehement view to what it was like to be sent to a concentration camp at the young age of twelve. To enhance the powerful effect of the book, a multitude of motifs were utilized, although one was undeniably conspicuous: The dehumanization of the Jews. The book was a full chronicle of one young man’s experience of the Holocaust, which included multifarious occurrences of the horrors Jewish prisoners were put through, ultimately removing the essence of their humanity. Symbolism was incorporated into this motif, in which Mr. Wiesel showed how one’s eyes not

When learning about the Holocaust, most are deprived of being able to understand the emotions, thoughts, and experiences of the millions of Jews; however, Elie Wiesel gives this opportunity through the telling of his personal experience. After ten years of silence, Elie Wiesel recounts his personal experiences of the Holocaust and retells the horrific details of the events he witnessed in his honest, eye-opening memoir Night. Taken at a young age, Elie Wiesel is transported to Auschwitz; at this concentration camp, Wiesel is separated from his mother and younger sister, whom he would never see again. During his years in the concentration camp, Wiesel and his father worked long exhausting hours every day. After a forty-two mile trip from Auschwitz to Gleiwitz in the snow and bitter cold, Elie Wiesel watches the slow death of his father by malnutrition and a harsh beating from the Nazis. Three months later American forces liberate the camp, freeing Wiesel. One of the most important memoirs one can read and a true inspiration, Night deserves to be read by everyone.

“Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled.” Elie Wiesel was a young boy, only 15 years of age, when he encountered the tortures of the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz. Another Auschwitz survivor, Susan Pollack, experienced the horrors of her family being taken away right before her eyes (Connolly) .The life stories of Elie Wiesel and Susan Pollack are two examples showing the graveness of the mass butchery and abuse the Auschwitz prisoners endured, therefore portraying their immense joy when they were liberated by the Soviet soldiers on January 27,1945 (Wiesel 92).

Through the years 1939 through 1945 there was the terrifying tragedy of World War II. It wrecked people’s homes and nations, killed many families and friends. However, the true destruction it caused was on the mind, the psyches and the sanity of the loved ones waiting at home and the men in battle. I am Louie Zamperini and this is my story from the war, and how I was unbroken.

Well, after all it might be true, during World War || many Jews were going into hiding trying to survived, many did but also many didn’t. We went and decided to interview about three people that survived. From what we have heard and learned, they all experienced pain, fear, losing their families, houses, and sometimes forgetting their own name. They all have different stories but they’re somewhat related to each other, the stories are often heartbreaking, but demonstrating strength, hope, and the courage that it took to survive.

I stepped out of the dark secluded room and into the bright sunlight. My eyes stung from the burning sunlight. I hadn’t seen the sunlight in ages. I had to go into hiding for months. The Nazi’s were searching everywhere for us. I wouldn’t let myself be captured. I had to trek on and flee from Germany. My family had made it to America and I owed it to them to make it there too.