Nazi Concentration Camp Experiences

Wiesel's account of experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and a few points in between projects a family focus. His youth was undoubtedly a factor in his perspective: he was only twelve when Jews in his Hungarian town of Sighet were initially rounded up for slaughter, and only fourteen when he and his family were shipped to Auschwitz. Wiesel recalls the attitudes of the townspeople when the first stories of mass genocide reached their ears -- overwhelmingly, the stories were met with disbelief and were rejected as impossibilities.

It was not until 1944, after fascists came to power in Hungary and a German defeat on the Russian front appeared imminent, that German troops swept into Hungary and appeared in Sighet. Following the arrival, a series of progressively repressive measures against Jews were implemented: first, curfews; then impoundment of valuable possessions; followed by an order requiring all Jews to wear a yellow star. Then the most dreaded occurrence of all -- news that all Jews would be deported (Wiesel, 1960, p. 23). Thus began the ordeal of Elie Wiesel.

Hungarian police managed the deportation. The Jewish po

. . .
ing closer, another evacuation was ordered, this time to a train station. Periodically, when the SS stopped the train to throw off the dead, prisoners cheered at the extra room and extra clothes. Elie's father, failing rapidly, was taken for dead and nearly thrown off, but Elie managed to get him to move to prove he still had life. The prisoners, who looked like skeletons and fought violently over crumbs of bread, arrived at a new camp -- Buchenwald. By this time, Elie's father was so near death that the boy wished he could be free from the burden (free to worry only about himself), and felt ashamed (Wiesel, p. 118). Survival impulses left prisoners with little respect for the near-dead: they beat Elie's father and took his bread. One night an SS officer delivered a sharp blow to the father's head, and the next morning he was gone, apparently taken to the crematory at night. Elie felt relief. It seemed tragic that he should lose his father so near the end of the ordeal, after many narrow escapes from death. After a year of agony, freedom was only ten weeks away. In Early April, 1945, Buchenwald was to be evacuated as the front neared. But an air raid postponed the move, the camp resistance organization revolted, and the
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Approximate Word count = 2709
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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