The Holocaust: Father Kolbe Of The Holocaust

He had been to many labor camps for five years and seven months. If he had stayed at a labor camp called Stalag VIII, he would’ve starved to death like the Russian POWs did. He was forced to work on the Autobahn near Krems, Austria. The Jews were given the most dirtiest and the most dangerous jobs. Their lives were threatened, they were beaten, and they were always hungry.

After arriving at the concentration camp Gleiwitz there was a selection and Shlomo, Elie’s father, was chosen to die. Elie had a tantrum which caused order to disappear, and Shlomo to slip over to the side of men chosen to live. Three days later Shlomo, Elie and the other men at Gleiwitz were moved to another concentration camp (Dakers 50). The reason for being moved was another attempt to avoid the

The conditions of the camp were unbearable. The prisoners were barely fed, mainly bread and water, and were cramped in small sleeping arrangements. "Hundreds slept in triple-tiered rows of bunks (Adler 51)." In the quarters that they stayed, there were no adequate cleaning facilities or restrooms for the prisoners. They rarely were able to change clothes which meant the "clothes were always infested with lice (Swiebocka 18)." Those were sick went to the infirmary where also there were eventually killed in the gas chambers or a lethal injection. The Germans did not want to have anyone not capable of hard work to live. Prisoners were also harshly punished for small things such as taking food or "relieving themselves during work hours (Swiebocka 19)." The biggest punishment was execution. The most common punishment was to receive lashings with a whip.

The date is April 11, 1945. A 17 year old boy looks towards the ominous gates of the Buchenwald concentration camp after nearly two years of misery and sees his first sign of hope: an American tank standing at the entrance of the gates. This young boy was Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the gruesome events that occurred in concentration camps during WWII. Elie shares a chilling memoir about his experience in his book Night. Throughout the novel, Elie and other Jewish inmates constantly used their families as their primary motive to overcome hardships even while being challenged by tough circumstances.

His entire family was dead. The nazis had “liquidate” the warsaw ghetto in 1943, first burning down buildings, then taking the surviving 49,000 men, women, and children by train to death and forced labor camps. ( 10)

After surviving the Holocaust, Elie writes down the things he experiences as a young boy during that time period. As Elie enters Birkenau holding his father’s hand, he claims, “Never shall I forget the small faces of children whose bodies I saw transform into smoke under a silent sky… Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God himself. Never.” (Wiesel 34). Upon his arrival at the concentration camp in Birkenau, Elie witnesses young children being burned alive in crematoriums. He asserts that he has seen events so horrid that the memory would stay embedded with him forever. As soon as he witnesses the death of countless people, Wiesel begins to see the world as one filled with cruelty and hatred, the exact opposite of what he learns in his Jewish studies. In the end of his memoir, Elie finds himself in the hospital after being liberated by American soldiers. Elie looks into the reflection of the mirror hanging on the wall and describes what he sees as, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me” (Wiesel 115). After experiencing such traumatic events, Wiesel refers to himself as a new person. The innocent and religious Elie slowly dies during the Holocaust. In his biographical memoir, Elie slowly changes his

At the age of 15, Elie Wiesel and his family were sent to Auschwitz as a part of the Holocaust. He was sent to many labor camps with his father where they were forced to work under inhumane conditions. However, his mother and younger sister were killed upon entering the camps. Wiesel recalled, “I didn’t know that this was the moment in the time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever.” (Wiesel, 29) After this, Wiesel and his father witnessed many atrocities. One of the first horrible sights Elie shared in his story was where he saw babies being

The sleeping conditions for jew were in terrible conditions. “Several hundred three-tier wooden bunk beds were installed in each building” (“Auschwitz…”) The barracks were highly populated with rats and other vermin. There were straw mattresses for people who had abdominal issues (“Auschwitz…”). To many who

family back home, and Kolbe decided to take his place. He was then sentenced to execution by

Elie and his father are taken to Auschwitz where they are separated from the rest of the family and first hear about atrocities such as the incinerators and gas showers. In the beginning Elie believes that everything is a rumor, a lie, that humankind cannot perform such crimes, but he soon is forced to witness the demise in front of his eyes. This is when his outlook on his faith starts to waver. While watching the smoke billow up from a crematory, Elie hears a man standing next to him begging him to pray, and for the first time in his life Wiesel turns away from God. “The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank him for?” (31).

Elie and his family were packed into cattle cars and taken to Auschwitz. As the train arrived, they saw smoke rising from chimneys and were assailed by the horrific smell of burning flesh (Wiesel, 2008).

Inmates resembled skeletons and were so weak they were unable to move. The smell of burning bodies was ever present and piles of corpses were scattered around the camp. However, you could be “saved” from the crematoria to be used as test subjects to cruel experimentation and used as lab rats for any experiment the scientists wanted to conduct. Later in the war, extermination camps were built. These were specialized for the mass murder of Jews using Zyklon B to ensure a painful, long, and torturous death. The bodies would then be thrown into the fire and all clothes, teeth, and shoes would be sent to pursue the German war front. At max efficiency, 20,000 people would be killed in the gas chambers a day. As the red Army approached near to liberate the Jews in concentration and extermination camps, SS officers sent prisoners on a death march across hundreds of miles, where they ran with no food or water, no matter the weather, until they reached the closest camp. SS officers proceeded to blow up the camps to hide the genocide from the

Elie Wiesel was 15 when the Nazis came for the 15,000 Jews of his hometown of Sighet, Transylvania, in May 1944. Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his mother and sister were murdered within hours, while he was put to work as a slave laborer. Eight months later, the Germans evacuated the camp and forced the survivors on a death march that ended at Buchenwald. Wiesel was one of the few still alive when the Americans arrived in April 1945.

Maximilian Kolbe was a Franciscan priest who had monasteries in Poland and Japan. When the Third Reich invaded Poland in 1938, everything changed. He opened the doors of his monastery in Poland to hide over 2,000 Jewish refugees. The germans found out about this action and arrested him in 1941. After this, Kolbe was shipped off to Auschwitz. During his stay in this concentration camp, one of the prisoners escaped. Because of this, the Nazis took 10 prisoners and put them in Block 13, a gas chamber used to kill prisoners. One of the men scheduled to be killed that day was Francis Gajowniczek, who was begging for his life when the camp commander came to pick him up. After Francis Gajowniczek mentioned his wife and children, Father Kolbe heroically

Kolbe was barely alive when the Officer walked in t so the Officer had to shoot him to kill him. In 1971 Maximilian Kolbe was beatified as a Confessor of Faith. Latter about 10 years later in 1981 he was canonized a martyr by Pope John Paul II, he lived through the holocaust and the war in Poland. Pope John Paul II said that he canonized Maximilian as a martyr because of the Nazis hatred against the Catholics (Biography Online). According to Biography Online Pope John Paul II said “Maximilian did not die but gave his life… for his brother.” Today Maximilian Kolbe is respected for his act of kindness and is known by the “Saint of Auschwitz.”