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The Holocaust : A Persecution Of Jews

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The Holocaust was a persecution of Jews implemented by the Nazi regime in Germany. Many Jews were stripped away from their homes and put into concentration camps. In many of these camps, they were forced to work as slaves and many times executed. In the book, Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, it discusses his hardships in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Levi 's main focus for his book is his survival during the camp and how one can survive the brutalities of the Nazis. Levi compares the difference of those who are “saved” and “drowned.” This is the comparison of the prisoners who survived and the ones that were doomed to the gas chambers. The “drowned” were those who did not out stand out of the crowd. Levi describes them as “they followed the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down the sea,” meaning that they did not resist the Germans and slowly died in the camp (90). These men were named“mussleman.” Mussleman gradually decays, they don’t try to resist or survive, and they blend into the soulless group of prisoners. Levi states, “One knows that they are only here on a visit, that in a few weeks nothing will remain of them but a handful of ashes,” (89). This quote means that the drowned do not last very long in the camp, and they have lost the will to live. Levi points out how these men usually are naïve. They seem to complain about their situation and long for their old lives. Many in the camp view them as fools to believe that they will escape by

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