I was upon my Mother’s shoulder when the door busted and our neighbor came in screaming his lungs out “Jewish families must report to the train assigned to us by tomorrow afternoon! Were going to be transported to the Warsaw Ghetto!” Everyone in the household froze like statues. I turned and stared to my father as if he would have something to say according to this devastating news. Nothing came out of his mouth until everyone’s face turned to him. He choked on his words as he said “I… don’t know what to do at this point. If we decide to hide the Germans will arrest us and directly send us to concentration camps… so it’s best that we report and live under those conditions than being directly sent to camps.” My father had a point. Our neighbor …show more content…
I imagined how uncomfortable and unfortunate the Ghetto was going to be because the population would increase as more Jews were being transported. My father demanded my siblings and I to pack clothes and significant supplies. I didn’t have much clothing in my closet, so I only packed 3 outfits, 2 pair of socks, 5 clean underwear and my running shoes. Attempting to think of anything significant that I would take I chose to snatch a black and white wrinkled picture of my family and a couple of snacks that were placed in the pantry. As hours passed, and my anxiousness grew, it was already the day I never thought would occur. The clock struck 4:00 and as we exited our house, all of our friends and neighbors exited as well forming a line towards the trains. As I looked back to see if there was anyone still coming out of there house, the corner of my eye captured two German officials dragging a teenager and his mom out of their house after they had been knocked out with the edge of an M1941 Johnson. There forehead had many wounds and bruises as if they were hit multiple times. I didn’t focus too much on it because my focus was already mainly on remaining next to my
As I began to hear the testimony, I recalled all the various wars that have created us into what we are today. Brother against brother, kings that ruled the land, and dictators that overtook anything they desired. Survivors from various disasters have had a chance to let others hear and feel what they have gone through when they were younger like us. Cesia Kingston, one of the many survivors of the disastrous Holocaust, shares her many experiences throughout her life. Some too precious to forget, but others filled with pain and sorrow. Through every word Cesia spoke, they filled my thoughts like a wave, but at the same moment I remembered the times when pain and fear overtook me.
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden.
When the train stopped and we were expelled, I stood on the stations platform sipping the air as if I were taking a long drink. Shaking off the feeling of confinement, I felt free. Yet, I was not free, we were not free, none of us were free. What was this place I asked myself? There was nothing here but barbed wire and watch towers, snarling dogs and Nazis. It seemed as if the train had deposited all of Europe’s Jews to this same location. Are we all here to work? There were also the others, men in striped uniforms and shaved heads and sunken faces. Some of them handled the belongings we were told to leave on the platform while others yelled at us like the Nazis, ordering people here and there.
It has been days. I stumble, foot over foot to the crack of sunlight that beams into the car. I feel the train rock back and forth, side to side as we tumble over the tracks to a “better life.” A better life. More bread. They care about us. I hear the screech as the cars stop as we are all tossed forward. “Welcome to Auschwitz, Jews.” I hear a man scream be strong. I hear the crack of a whip and gun shots. I know they lied.
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
When all the chances of breaking free from what was in store for them were pushed away, I wondered what would have happen if the Wiesel family had taken the chances they were given. If they had taken the opportunity to leave, maybe the family would be safe. Maybe they wouldn’t have had to face the horrific tragedy of the Holocaust; maybe the light behind their eyes wouldn’t have faded away along with their faith in God. Maybe, just maybe, the Wiesel family would have been all right, trying to restart a new life in Palestine, only to remain ignorant of what was happening around them…But ignorance comes with the consequences of harsh realization and the truth is never sugarcoated. The truth is cold and bitter, like poison forced down a person’s
During a horrible time in history, a courageous rescue operation saved the lives of thousands of Jewish children. There were among thousands of Jewish parents throughout Germany, Australia, and Czechoslovakia who were sending their children-some less than one year-to Britain to live with strangers(editors of scope, N.D.). There were many people working in the kindertransport to save the lives of thousands of children. Many of the parents hoped to get their children back but unfortunately, in some cases, they didn't. Throughout these horrible events, we are able to grasp the reality of these terrors the Jews went through, and what the children went through throughout the Kindertransport.
Gerda was 15 when she was moved into a ghetto called the Bielsko ghetto in 1939 ,September 1. Gerda had an older brother who was 19. But that changed when young men 16 and up had to sign up for the army. Now it was just Gerda and her parents. Then german fighter planes appeared overhead, causing people to flee the city. Her family remanded in the town. In the morning, she heard intense shouting and saw Nazi’s on motorcycles shouting “Heil Hitler”. One day women and men were separated and asked to be put in lines. Gerda was in the line with her mother and a guard asked her how old she was and she said, “18”. Then she was put in a truck a shouting at her mother to ask where she was going and her mother said she didn’t know. Gerda jumped out of the truck but a SS officer caught her and said to her that she was too young to die. Then she knew that her mother was going to die. After Gerda being moved into the ghetto she was deported in 1942 to work in a factory in Bolkenhain, Silesia. Besides the of all the labor and hunger there was caring caring between the inmates. A German supervisor, Mrs. Kugler, saved Gerda’s life because when Gerda got sick and the SS men had to inspected her to see if she should continue working or die. Mrs. Kugler helped her pass the Inspection by just letting her work and then rest again. She was moved to a camp called Marzdorf and spent three years there. It
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.
The holocaust was an event that undoubtedly left a mark on millions of people’s lives. But among those people, those most affected were the survivors who, by chance, could walk away from Auschwitz with their lives. Upon reflection of the tragedies we now know occurred within the Jewish internment camps, one can only imagine the scarring effects that must have been left on the survivors. Through three texts I was able to identify a conversation of just how deteriorating the Jewish internment camps were to those who managed to live through them.
Good morning / afternoon Mr Retsos and 10HT today I will be speaking to you about the Warsaw ghetto uprising but before that I will give you a brief summary of the Warsaw ghetto. When Poland was invaded by Germany in September 1939, more that 400,000 Jews in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, were imprisoned in an particular area of the city which was no more than 2 square miles. In November 1940, this ghetto was sealed off by brick walls, barbed wire and armed guards. If anyone was caught leaving the ghetto they would be shot on sight. The amount of food that was brought into the ghetto was controlled by the Nazis. Each month more than thousands of Jews died due to disease and starvation.
The Holocaust can be described by facts, pictures, history lessons, among others, that can make a strong and lasting impression on an individual. However, testimonies are when the true horrors of this event become real. Testimonies are personal. Their authentic emotions, thoughts, and feelings are wrapped up in a little box with a red bow and given to the public as a fragile gift. Survivor Manya Friedman wrote, “I had little confidence when I started. My hands were so shaky I could barely read my own writing. As I started writing, I was given confidence, support, and encouragement. If I can do this, then you can too” (“The Transition”). Due to her strength and many others, individuals who weren’t affected by the holocaust are fortunate to be provided with such thoughtful insight about how the lives of these Jewish individuals were affected and remain affected. Even so, their experiences are something we will never be able to fathom.
The Holocaust was a horrible time for many people, but it was worse for the Jews. They had to live in towns where they were not wanted and when the war began they had to go into hiding or they would be captured and murdered. Jews that did not escape in time, or those who were found in hiding, were sent to ghettos before they were sent to concentration camps. One of these ghettos was the Warsaw Ghetto.
Ellen Cassedy’s memoir, We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust, charts her journey to her family’s past and her own reckoning with what she finds. As she explores her own family’s Jewish past, she struggles to learn Yiddish and gets to know the broader cultural landscape that is contemporary Lithuania, the place where her family came from. As she sets off to study Yiddish and connect with her Jewish forebears, her uncle Will, a holocaust survivor, gave her a slip pulled from his pocket and told her to read it. It was a sheet that had been folded and refolded multiple times which spoke about a day in the Shavl ghetto. It was a sheet that made her personal conquest into an exploration of Lithuania, on how Jews and non-Jews are confronting their Nazi and Soviet past in order to move forward in the future. The sheet read “On November 5, 1943, a kinder-aktsye, a roundup of children, had occurred. Soldiers were snarling dogs and bayonets had rampages through the narrow streets, ripping apart walls and floors in the search for every last child. A Jewish policeman stood at the ghetto gate as the sons and daughters of the ghetto-hundreds of them-were shoved into trucks and driven away, never to be seen again” (Cassedy, 2012, p. 51). Here she
Today my job was to force the Jews into the ghetto. I went into their house, took their homes and kicked them out. The ghettos being only sixteen square miles and we managed to fit over double its capacity. Oh how fun it was for my friends and I to pick on them. I cut the hair of a random Jew and put it on myself mimicking those worthless animals. One of my favorite parts of my day was determining which one of those pests can actually be useful. Those who can work would become slaves and their pay would go to us. That’s the least I deserve for watching over these