Survival in Auschwitz--finished #27

What an amazing book.  It really allows the reader to understand a small portion of what these many people had to go through in these camps.  This is something that I know I cannot fully grasp, living in America at this time with almost every want or type of food just minutes away.  I think most people believe and had a kind of base understanding of the holocaust but I believe reading a book like this is also needed.  People need to be knocked upside their head and be reminded of this.  I know there is a Holocaust Museum here in St Louis that I need to visit as well.  I am not sure if Rose my oldest at 9 is really ready for it yet though.  I will probably have to check into it first to find out.

Earlier this year I also read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which talked about the gulags in Siberia under the Stalin times.  There are many similarities between the two camps, like the work being done, the food, the guards, etc.  The one big difference is that these German camps exterminated thousands both before even getting into a camp or once they outlived their usefulness and room was needed for more incoming prisoners.  Levi didn't go into much detail about the exterminations because he did not see it, instead he talks about right off the train being separated from the women & children and never seeing them again.  Later he talks about the selection process in camp where an SS soldier decides in the matter of a few seconds if you stay in the camp or will be taken from the camp.  The prisoners hope it is just moving to another camp, but all know it means death.

The inhuman nature of the people that set these camps up as well everything around them that supported them in one way or another is just mindboggling.  I sit here in my warm home and think that today something like this could not happen, but then I am reminded of the genocides that have gone on in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and still happening in Dafur/Sudan and could easily happen in Somila, it is isn't going on yet.  I certainly don't have answers to solve these problems but just have a faith in God that for whatever reason these things occur that they do not happen in vain.  I believe that people will get their just due in the afterlife and that cuts both ways.