Milkweed Research Paper

According to the texts and eyewitness accounts, the Holocaust had horrendous effects on the people who lived through it. During this time Jews were being rounded up and put into concentration camps by order of the German government. Writings and testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust are around even to this day. According to these sources, Holocaust survivors suffered tremendously since they were treated as less than human , they lost loved ones, and were constantly abused.

The Holocaust was an event in history that set out to get rid of all the Jew’s. The Nazis did this by having concentration camps meant to work the Jew’s to extreme levels of exhaustion and made them go through other things that led to the deaths of some of the Jew’s. Countless concentration camps were used to kill off the Jew’s of any age and gender or to have them die of the daily activities that they did. There were many concentration camps, including well known ones, such as Auschwitz, which were a little different on the specific jobs that they had, but most of the concentration camps followed the same daily schedule. Their days would always start off early and end in the dark hours of the night. The daily life in the concentration camps

There has been many stories on how cruel the victims of the Holocaust were treated, especially in the concentration camps. The Auschwitz concentration camps, out of many other camps is where this all occurred.The victims were abused and put through forced labor, it was physically and mentally hard for them to live in the camps knowing in the matter of days they will die. The prisoners in the camps were forced to work, the sick and disabled prisoners were killed as they were seen as “useless” since they were not capable of working. The labor consisted of digging ditches, leveling the ground, laying roads, and constructing new blocks and buildings for a tough 11-14 hours a day. During the tiring and inevitable hours of working, the prisoners had small rations of food.The meals were

The conditions that the Jews and other were put through were super horrible. They were forced into boxcars that didn’t have anything in them and they wondered where they were and where they were going. They stood in the boxcars for days with no food or water to keep them alive. (Joseph)(Source 3) Along their way to the concentration camps they were exposed to harsh weather. In the summer it was scorching hot and in the winter it was freezing cold. Since they were shoved amongst each other they suffered from suffocation. Along their journey many young and old died along the way (“The Holocaust”)(Source 2). Inside the boxcars there was no windows or anyway to breath. It was also very unsanitary because of the abundance of people in them and they didn’t have any water to at least wash themselves with. All they could do was stand there in the dark and wait (Joseph) (Source

One main condition during the Holocaust was lice and fleas. This was because so many people were in such a small area, a room that could only fit one hundred, would be packed with almost one thousand people, the lice and fleas were everywhere because of this. Men would get their heads shaved, and woman would get their hair cut really short, or sometimes even shaved all the way off like men, they did this in order to try stop the spreading of lice. In the barracks the lice and fleas were spreaded the worst. The bed would move in the straw beds because they were so infested with the bugs. Also men and womens clothes were infested with the bugs badly because they could not wash their clothing, so the lice and fleas

During the Holocaust, the living conditions for the Jewish population were horrifying and unthought of. The lack of sanitary facilities meant they had to remove dirt and pests from clothing by waiting in a line that took up most of the day. The barracks that the prisoners slept in was in terrible conditions and the rooms were damp with leaky roofs (“Auschwitz…”). The health and how the jewish lived was no concern of the Nazi soldiers.

In fact, the lack of providing nutrition to Jews caused individual disruption: “At that moment in time, all that mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup- those were my entire life” (Wiesel 52). The desperation was penetrating as each soul depended on the small rations of food given in the concentration camps. The admiration of an extra ration was something that all Jews longed for. In any case, they would do anything in order to receive a wholeness of satisfaction. Furthermore, starvation destroyed each individual: “I was nothing but a body, perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time” (Wiesel 52). The Jews were forced to think that they had no other choice but to rely on the support and hospitality of the Nazis. Their only motive to live was under the fear of death and the unknown. Unsatisfying nutrition breached each individual and made them desperate for change, which often led to their brutal

The Holocaust was the mass murder of Jews under the control of Hitler during the period 1941-1945. More than 6 million Jews, as well as members of other groups, such as gypsies and homosexuals, were murdered at concentration camps the biggest camp was Auschwitz. They got tea for their morning meal, for lunch prisoners would be given a litre of soup that was watered down. If they were lucky, they might find a piece of a potato peel. One of the survivors of the holocaust stated “Your bowl was your life, without your bowl you didn’t eat.” (Kitty - Return to Auschwitz, YTV 1979) Hunger caused the Jew inmates to do things they normally wouldn't do.

Wild beasts of prey, with animal hatred in their eyes; an extraordinary vitality had seized then, sharpening their teeth and nails” (Weisel, 95). Clearly, food as a method survival wasn’t a particularly effective way to stay alive. It tended to kill only those who used it as an attempt to stay alive. Fighting for food did not help save very many lives during the holocaust because it all wound down to simply being selfish, and caring only about yourself, though some people chose not to succumb to greed. Many people struggled for months or even years, to stay with their family, and to help each other through the holocaust.

During the Holocaust, Jewish people were submitted to the vilest and most inhumane conditions the world had ever seen. Their most basic freedoms were taken from them. At first, all they lost were items such as flour, eggs, sugar, and cocoa. Later, they were stripped of their land and businesses and separated according to their ability to be productive slaves to Hitler's Third Reich. Those that were deemed unfit were sent to slaughter houses. Entire families were torn apart, much like what happened to Gerda Weissman Klein's family. Despite watching her mother, father, and brother being taken from her, knowing that she would never see them again, she found the strength to survive three years in German labor camps through her family,

Food shortages were common in the camps. Many people went days without eating and black markets were set up everywhere during these times, inexpensively sold. The amount these camps has un-humanized some people is a tragic tale but the whole war beginning to end is another.

Things got hard for the Jews in the Holocaust and who also survived. Ways of life changed. The Nazis changed everything about their ways and their beliefs. The people started questioning their belief in God, their morals of what they viewed themselves as, and also education changed immensely.

Milkweed is a book about a boy who is called Gypsy, Stoptheif and Jew. He becomes friends with a group of orphaned Jewish boys and lives with them. He is given a name and a backstory from Uri, who protects him. The name is Misha Pilsudski. Misha wants to become a Nazi when he gets older because of their boots but changes his mind. Misha meets a Jewish girl named Janina Milgrom, her family is forced to move to the Warsaw Ghetto. Misha eventually becomes part of the family and lives with them in the ghetto. Every night Misha slips through the 2 brick hole in the wall around the ghetto, to steal food. While Misha is stealing food he sees Uri and is warned to escape from the ghetto because trains are going to take the Jews away. Misha comes home

The Holocaust was a horrible event and had many tragedies and losses of family and friends. This event starts in 1933 where Hitler rises to power, and ends in 1945 where Hitler is defeated and the holocaust has ended. There are many topics about the holocaust that people would want to know, but this topic is a crucial and important one. The topic is Life during the Holocaust where we learn about how Jewish people live during the holocaust and what happened to them in the concentration camps.

Jewish people did not only suffer physically, but psychologically throughout the Holocaust. The Jewish prisoners were deprived of food and water, which resulted in a decline of morale, cruelty among fellow prisoners instead of unity, and crushed friendships. Some of the Jews did not have the desire of anything, including the desire to live because they endured such a great amount of pain and suffering (Jewish 3). Sometimes, best friends throughout life were cruel and threatening towards one another for one small piece of bread. When Jewish people were organized by gender, families were forced to split apart and never witnessed the presence of each other again.