Rudy at Auschwitz

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

Having only the memories of loved ones that you will never see again. Being stripped of all your pride and dignity and the only person you have is yourself. Feeling like you are losing yourself in the process, these are the feelings of being in Buna concentration camp. Auschwitz survivor stated “Today in our times, hell must be like this."

A meal time was one of the most important times of the day, for a prisoner. In the morning, a prisoner would be fed coffee or herbal tea. The Holocaust Explained states “For lunch prisoners would be given a litre of watery soup. If they were lucky, they might find a piece of turnip or potato peel.” (The Holocaust Explained.org 2014). For dinner, black bread, a tiny piece of sausage, and cheese. The black bread was supposed to be able to last prisoners throughout the night, and into the morning. Because of the bread’s durability, many prisoners secretly hid and stashed amounts of black bread to eat. In camps like Belzec, food was placed on a high value within the life of the prisoners, making reason for them to smuggle and steal it. But because of the constant work, brutality, and small portions of food that were given to the prisoners, many died and suffered from sickness caused by hunger. Through this, weight and muscle tissue were barely left on the bodies of the prisoners, with the lack of food and

When reading the novel Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, the reader wonders whether his survival is attributed to his will to survive or his luck. Reading the novel Survival in Auschwitz by author Primo Levi leads one to wonder whether his survival is attributed to his indefinite will to survive or a very subservient streak of luck. Throughout the novel, he is time and again spared from the fate that supposedly lies ahead of all inhabitants of the death camp at Auschwitz. Whether it was falling ill at the most convenient times or coming in contact with prisoners who had a compassionate, uncommonly positive disposition, it would seem as though some higher power wanted to spare his life. Although Levi is characterized as a willing and intellelectual individual, it ay be that his personality and chemistry training were the sole reasons for his survival. Or, maybe, Levi was just lucky.

Everyone who has taken a history course that goes through the 20th century knows about the atrocities performed in Nazi Germany; 11 million people exterminated and countless others put into concentration camps with unimaginable conditions. But most people do not try to explain how the German soldiers could do these things to other human beings. Primo Levi in his book Survival in Auschwitz attempts to answer this question. He begins by explaining the physical and psychological transformation of the prisoners and how that enabled the Germans to see the prisoners as inhuman and therefore oppress-able. Levi believes that the Germans treated the Jewish prisoners horrendously because of the prisoner’s

barely any air, there was nothing to drink or eat, it was hot, and people had to

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 people barely get to eat. “Eliezer and his fellow captives are forced to live in squalid barracks; they are fed only bread, water, and tasteless broth.” “The train with the deportees had crossed the Hungarian border and, once in Polish territory, had been taken over by the Gestapo.” “As the train passes through towns, people throw bread into the open cars, then watch as the prisoners beat and kill each other for food. (Wiesel).”

In the most suitable cases, the soldiers had cabins, which were crude, small, and very unsturdy. In most instances, however, they got tents made out of canvas, which frequently ripped and did not help keep out cold in the dead winter. Because of this, many men got illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and dysentery. In fact, so many got sick that the hospitals were overflowing, even though each section had a hospital for itself. Some soldiers’ wives agreed to be nurses to help, but there were not enough medical supplies, so many died. Out of 12,000 men, 3,000 died and 2,000 left because they were sick.

"In mid-April, the Muhldorf prisoners were loaded on a cattle train, which finally stopped at Tutzing, 25 miles southwest of Munich, on the morning of April 29. Amid rumbling in the distance, someone screamed, “Americans!” The train doors opened, and Jacob, too weak to walk, crawled toward the approaching American troops, kissing the steel tracks of their tanks.

They also had to wear only one pair of pajamas until they died, then the pajamas

The majority of families in the camp had chickens, pigs, or other useful animals that help with everyday life. We had a garden in our backyard with fruits, vegetables, and other types of eatable plants. There were banana trees, mangos, jackfruits, peppers, papaya, sugar cane and star fruit trees. Our houses were built with bamboo and the rooftops were covered with hay. A lot of houses were on hills because the camp was not a flat place. We had no electricity or water lines connected to our home. Houses were built

Eighteen million Europeans went through the Nazi concentration camps. Eleven million of them died, almost half of them at Auschwitz alone.1 Concentration camps are a revolting and embarrassing part of the world’s history. There is no doubt that concentration camps are a dark and depressing topic. Despite this, it is a subject that needs to be brought out into the open. The world needs to be educated on the tragedies of the concentration camps to prevent the reoccurrence of the Holocaust. Hitler’s camps imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of Jews for over five years. Life in the Nazi concentration camps was full of terror and death for its individual prisoners as well as the entire Jewish

A further aspect of Survival in Auschwitz that reinforces the dehumanizing effect of the death camp on the Jewish prisoners is the constant presence of hunger and starvation among the prisoners. Food and its acquisition and consumption are a constant topic that Primo Levi discusses because it constantly occupied the minds of most prisoners. Levi states, "We have learnt the value of food; now we also diligently scrape the bottom of the bowl after the ration and we hold it under our chins when we eat bread so as not to lose the crumbs" (33). Bread and soup are the only things prisoners in the camp receive and whether you are served soup from the top or the bottom is of great importance. The prisoners would try to get soup from the bottom half of the vat because soup from the upper portion is mostly watery broth whereas soup from the bottom portion contains more vegetables pieces (33). The insatiable desire for food would lead prisoners to act in very animalistic ways. Upon waking up in the morning, prisoners would quickly make their beds and then run to the latrines urinating "while they run to save time, because within five minutes begins the

In June, 1940, the Auschwitz Concentration Camp opened; this camp would later be the home and death place of hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Jews, Poles, and Gypsies made up the large majority of prisoners in the camp. Life in Auschwitz included living in undesirable conditions, and being kept on a very strict schedule day in, day out.