Personal Narrative: The Holocaust By Tadeusz Borowski

In the book Escape Children of the Holocaust, author Allan Zullo highlights the struggles of three innocent Jewish children, Hanci Hollander, Halina Litman and Gideon Frieder. All three children were born in different countries affected by the Holocaust; Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. If you did not know, the Holocaust was a gruesome time in the world’s history. There were concentration camps for Jews. All because of one Austrian man, Adolf Hitler, who hated the Jews so much he did not want one Jew left standing. Consequently, he made the Nazi Germans hunt, enslave and kill the Jews.

I am and SS officer. I was stationed at Auschwitz. More Jews were coming in every day. There were eighty to a cattle cart. There were so many families that had to go separate ways from one another. I had killed mothers and the babies and weakest of the men that couldn’t work. It was horrible, I do say. If I could say no I would never do it again. I loved my country and Hitler at the time, so I was willing to do whatever it took to get noticed. I was then stationed at a woman’s concentration camp. They all had gotten shaved, had no gold teeth, and had had tattoos on their arms. It was their identification code. They were so skinny it was just skin stuck to the bones. They looked like corpses, but alive. I wonder how many died soon after.

What would your account of the Holocaust be? The Holocaust was a unique event in twentieth century history which, evolved between 1933 and 1945. Beginning with discrimination; then the Jews were separated from their communities and persecuted; they were treated as less than human beings and murdered. While the Jews of Europe were the Nazis’ primary target, many millions of other people were also imprisoned, enslaved and murdered. These people included Roma, those with mental or physical disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, trade unionists, political opponents, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. The Nazis did not act alone. They were supported and assisted by people from within the countries they occupied across Europe. Most countries stood by while the Nazis and their accomplices carried out the mass murder of the Jewish people. Thus, in 1941 there were about 11 million Jews living in Europe; by May 1945 the Nazis had murdered six million of them. One-and-a-half million of these were children.

Throughout human history, there has been many horrible and tragic moments involving famine, death and war. In that long line of history, there is however one moment that can’t be challenged to none other and that is World War 2: The rise of Nazi power and the slaughtering of many Jews. Many Jewish people suffered during those times and not many survived. Few of the people who did survive however, managed to write about their experiences and morals they had during World War 2, sharing their ideas to the world. A survivor and author of one of these books, Elie Wiesel, inscribed many of his morals and ideas in his writing using many literary terms such as tone, mood, characterization, diction, and even dialogue to portray them as themes in his

Anxiety washed over the poor boy. It was dark, darker than Zerdek had ever know. With each second that passed, a low mumble could be heard from the corner. Something or someone else was here with him. Wherever here was. He shut his eyes thinking about the light. Thinking about anything that would make it seem like he was back at home. Home. He tried to remember the faces. He tried to remember each of the tree top building. Yet it was a blur. Everything that had happen with-in the last few hours, day, months was a giant blur from him. He had no concept of time. A click came from afar, as light came barreling in. Zerdek let out a low growl as he covered his eyes, unable to adjust to the light quickly enough. Arms reached out and pulled to two

“I pray you never stand at any crossroads in your own lives, but if you do, if the darkness seems so total, if you think there is no way out, remember, never ever give up. The darker the night, the brighter the dawn, and when it gets really, really dark, this is when one sees the true brilliance of the stars.” These words were spoken by Gerda Klein, a Holocaust survivor. Her story is filled with desperation and an overwhelming sense of hope. Gerda Weissmann was born in Bielsko, Poland. Both of her parents and her older brother died during the Holocaust. She was somehow able to survive “the ghetto, deportation, slave labor camps and a three month death march. She was rescued by an American soldier named Kurt Klein. She ended up marrying him and moving to the United States.

Carrying Chaim close to her body, and fearfully looking around, she ran home, the first place she could think of. For the first few minutes, her husband, Victor was relieved to see her alive; his moods changed drastically when he realized the danger they will face with Chaim at home.

Elie Wiesel experienced several horrors throughout the Holocaust. As a boy, he lost his family and his faith in his own religion because of the mass slaughter of six million Jews along with several different races and religions. Elie describes scenes that a fifteen year old child should never have to see such as frantic families lined up for a death in fire, bodies crushed all over as people ran them over, and babies being thrown into pits of fire.

Everyone knows about the holocaust, but very few people truly understand the damages done and the extent of it. Since a detailed, first person account of the holocaust will teach us about history, Night is the most powerful book on the holocaust. It is the most important book because of its gresome detail, how the holocast got started, and how it shows the complete and total breakdown of a human thorugh the years.

The quote by Wiesel has a deep meaning that can impact what people have learned about the holocaust. The Jewish holocaust was a devastating event that affected a worldwide number of people then and now. It had come to a point during the holocaust where “fear was greater than hunger” (Wiesel 59) during those times. The words written by Wiesel is indicating that the fear of death and misfortune was far greater than hunger. When people hear the word holocaust they think of how tragic it is, but they do not know true essence of what the survivors had to go through. When discussing the holocaust we learn that the Jews were downsized to animals “faster, you filthy dogs” (Wiesel 85). Jew and non-Jews in the concentration camps began to lose a sense

My father said I was safe here in Paris. But after the Nazis came, nobody was safe. I am the youngest of three children in my Jewish family. My Polish father was a former officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, which is amazing. I grew up speaking French just like my sisters did. Mom says it’s safer in Paris than in the poor town she grew up in. But everyone on the street just stares at me as if I were a curse. I tried to talk to them but they wouldn’t listen. I would have told my parents about how the people looked at me if I had the courage; I was too embarrassed. The school that I went to was special, funded by the Rothschild family, my parents said. My dad reassured us by telling me that we would be safe away

I stood there mentally preparing myself for what was coming my way. As my hands grasped in my pockets there was a faint sound of a roll call. The monotone voice was saying everyone’s name but my attention was focused elsewhere. The sound of my name snapped me back into reality as I quietly said yes.

On October 7th, 1944 a Jewish prisoner group,"special detachment", revolted and blew up Crematorium IV killing many guards. I felt a spark of hope coming and all I could think that there was a chance to stop all of this. Sadly, my hopes we destroyed almost immediately. I had no choice but to join the group of German solders that killed all the revolters. As I partook in this I began to wonder who was truly the prisoner here. The innocent Jews who cry for liberation or the German who keeps them from it.

The Nazi’s had finally invaded all around Warsaw, Poland. We didn’t know if Joseph and I would survive a while longer in the same hiding spot.

As mentioned before, graphic novels can be great tools for some, if not all, readers. As well the holocausts can be a difficult subject, not always easy to read about. Using graphic novels, which often is associated with children, to represent a traumatic event can be problematic: “The enormity of atrocity is such that the very act of representing it risked trivializing or over-dramatizing it,”(2). In other words, the author has to be very cautions when writing serious graphic novels not to get too creative