Roll Call Narrative

The concentration camps of the Holocaust were home to countless injustices to humanity. Not only were the prisoners starved to the brink of death, but they were also treated as animals, disciplined through beatings nearly every day. Most would not expect an ill-prepared young boy to survive such conditions. Nevertheless, in the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Wiesel defies the odds and survives to tell the story. Wiesel considers this survival merely luck, yet luck was not the only factor to come into play: his father had an even greater impact. Prior to their arrival at Auschwitz, Wiesel lacked a close relationship with his rather detached father; however, when faced by grueling concentration camp life, the bond between Wiesel and his father ultimately enables Wiesel’s survival.

(n.d.). A lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy. This book discusses the life of Thomas Buergenthal, who was a survivor of World War 2.Thomas Buergenthal is a former judge of the International Court of Justice. During the war, Thomas’s family was separated. He was forced to leave his mother, and was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. Hardly any people survived this brutal camp, however, Thomas was one of the few. He is currently living today and tells his story to many. He arrived at Auschwitz at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp. He considered himself “lucky” to be at Auschwitz. Almost two years after he was freed, he was miraculously reunited with his mother. In 1951 he arrived in the U.S. to start a new life. This brought to my attention that these issues are still prevalent in the United States today. People still come from all over the world, seeking a better life in New York. Buergenthal still tells his story which explains the dark times and hardships he had to face. I used this book to further inform myself on the child from the war I chose. This book made me realize how much I take for granted today, like freedom, family, and an education. This is a point I wish to call to my students’ attention,

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.

Describe: Liesel and her best friend, Rudy Steiner, has been walking through town when a woman in a window above them looks to the streets and announces, “Die Juden;” The Jews. This is when a vast amount of Jewish prisoners begins to march their way down Munich Street while Nazi soldiers barked orders at them. To everyone, especially Liesel (who had a Jewish person living in her basement), this was the furthest thing from a pleasant sight. And apparently, Hans Hubermann had enough of this, as if being controlled by God himself, Hans walked over and offered a particularly weak Jew a piece of bread out of pure sympathy, only to be beaten by overlooking Nazis.

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.

The story I listened to was about a young lady, named Bella Jakubowicz. She went to the concentration camps. The Camp Bella went to was called, Bergen-Belsen. This camp was meant to be a death camp. This camp did not have a gas chamber, like the ones at Auschwitz. At the Bergen-Belsen, they had very minimum basicas. They spelt on the floor, on hay. There was nothing in the areas, they slept. Bella was told multiple times, they need to be punished (Oral

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.

Elie, his father, and the prisoners had to run in the snow more than 40 miles to another concentration camp, deeper in Germany. When they stopped a man, Rabbi Eliahou, asked if Elie and his father if they had seen his son. Elie had and he realized that the Rabbi’s son had “wanted to get rid of his father…to free himself from an encumbrance” (Wiesel 87). They then got on cattle trains that took them to the next concentration camp, Buchenwald. They passed by villages and when people threw bread in, the prisoners began to fight to the death for it. One son began to attack his own father for a piece and killed him, only to be killed the next moment himself. Soon after they arrived in Buchenwald, Eliezer’s father was very weak and sick. A part of Elie felt that if he could get rid of his father he “could use all [his] strength to struggle for [his] own survival” (Wiesel 101). He was very ashamed, even more so when his father died and he felt “free at last” (Wiesel 105).

Survival in Auschwitz written by Primo Levi is a first-hand description of the atrocities which took place in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. The book provides an explicit depiction of camp life: the squalor, the insufficient food supply, the seemingly endless labour, cramped living space, and the barter-based economy which the prisoners lived. Levi through use of his simple yet powerful words outlined the motive behind Auschwitz, the tactical dehumanization and extermination of Jews. This paper will discuss experiences and reactions of Jews who labored in Auschwitz, and elaborate on the pre-Auschwitz experiences of Jews who were deported to Auschwitz and gassed to death on their arrival, which had not been

They left them to starve with little food, to work in all terrible,deplorable, uncouth conditions all for them to feel and to be treated like vile animals. Prisoners even acted like animals fighting for food,water and clothing - anything to get them to live one more day. A lack of compassion for others can not change what they saw in the concentration camp ”bela katz- son of a big tradesman from our town-had arrived at Birkenau with the first transport, a week before us. When heard of our arrival, he managed to get word to us that, having been chosen for his strength, he had himself put his father’s own body into the crematoria oven “ (Wiesel 33) Having to put his own father into his own death bed is a harrowing experience and not being able to protest at the fear of his own death is an irrefutable memory that will never be forgotten. The nazis and their unvarnished mistreatment,ciless hostility that showed no compassion for the prisoners “ then came the march past the victims two men were no longer alive .their tongues were hanging out swollen and bluish . but the third rope was still moving; the child too light was still breathing ….. And so he remained for more than half an hour lingering between life and death,writhing before our eyes.and we were forced to look at him at close range he was still alive when i passed him .his tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished”(Wiesel 65) . death

The Holocaust is one of the darkest and most saddening events in European history. The concentration camps in Europe, like Auschwitz, were places of torture and murder where millions of Jews were exterminated. As a Polish citizen myself, I have heard stories of the Holocaust that were passed down from my great grandmother who lived in Krakow, which is a small town close to where Auschwitz was located. My great grandmother and many high school history classes only ever mentioned the horrific treatment and extermination of Jews in Auschwitz. However, in 1944 Elie Wiesel’s account of Auschwitz in his memoir, Night, describes being transported from Auschwitz I, which was SS headquarters, to Auschwitz II, which was a killing centre, and then finally to Auschwitz III, which was a slave labour camp. My interest of Auschwitz’s three camps from reading Elie Wiesel’s memoir has led me to research and write about the different concentration camps, Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), and Auschwitz III (Buna), that Elie Wiesel was taken to and discuss their purposes.

Elie Wiesel once said, “I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it ”. To Wiesel, it seemed impossible the dreadful events of the Holocaust could indeed happen and be accepted. In his autobiography Night, Elie Wiesel recalls his experiences while imprisoned as a young Jewish boy during World War II. ELiezer, the young Wiesel, is seized from is small Transylvanian town and transported the the concentration camp Birkenau. This story describes the harshness and cruelty of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany and the effects that those environments had on the imprisoned Jews.

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.

On one particular day, I remember the camp commander lined everybody up like he was Zeus. He would look into everybody's eyes, one by one. If you looked away or blinked, you would be sent away. If you didn’t, you would stay at the camp. I remember him approaching me, then staring straight into my eyes. His name was SS-Hauptsturmführer Alex Piorkowski, with blue-gray eyes and a pale face that nobody wanted to see angry. I strained to keep my eyes focused, and my eyelids open. Then, just as I was about to blink, he sent me to the good side. The people on the other side were taken to a different camp. Life went on as usual with the occasional bumps and bruises along the way, but nothing

Imagine being stripped from everything you have ever had, including your identity. Michael Bornstein lived in Nazi concentration camps for seven months which is very surprising because most children would only last two weeks there. Facing many obstacles at the concentration camp Michael Bornstein had to overcome the fact this his father and brother were murdered at Auschwitz. One day as Michael Bornstein was watching a film about the holocaust - The Chosen - he noticed there was footage of him as a young boy at a Nazi concentration camp. Baffled and overwhelmed at this footage, he called the director of the movie, asking where this footage came from and how he managed to get a hold of it.