Survival in Auschwitz
Just like Silence, Survival in Auschwitz uses very simple vocabulary but is so sobering and emotional. Levi’s experiences are breathtakingly sad and full of despair.
Last summer, I had the opportunity to attend a leadership conference in Washington D.C. One of the places we attended while at the conference was the Holocaust Museum. While reading Survival in Auschwitz, all I could think about was one of the exhibits in the museum. It was a room that had a picture on the wall of a concentration camp and the rest of the walls were glass. It had a glass door. I opened the door and inside it was full of benches. I sat down on one of the benches. Then, I heard a voice and then another. The voices were men and women who survived Auschwitz telling how they lived and survived. Sadly, with the time allotted to our group, I could not stay in the room. I had to keep going. It was so intriguing to hear the actual survivors voices tell their story. It was not just someone telling someone else’s story. They were telling their own.
The Holocaust Museum had several exhibits that instantly came to mind while reading. Another exhibit was a room that you walked through that was full of shoes. I thought of this room when Primo had to take off all of his clothes and shoes once he entered the camp. Those shoes represented a life that was either alive but dead in spirit or a life physically dead.
When we think of the Holocaust, we think of the victims trapped inside camps. I believe, we forget about the victims trapped outside the camp. The people who lived next to the camps who knew what was going on was wrong but could not do anything for the victims. They had to live with the guilt of not doing anything. I am not saying that all the people who lived near the camps and did not do something are victims. I am saying those who wished to help but could not are the forgotten victims. Imagine if you lived next to a place where horrible things happen but because of a government and people spying on everyone there was no way to help… I do know that there were those who helped the victims inside the camps, those people need to be remembered.
P.S. I commented on Cade’s and Leanne’s posts.
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