After going through an event as traumatic as the Holocaust, I do not know how anyone could be the same. Viktor Frankl said that Holocaust survivors suffered “moral deformity” and “apathy”, meaning that they no longer had the same thought process as most people have and suffered from a lack of concern and enthusiasm. Even for Elie, in the book Night by Elie Wiesel, by the end of the book he as doing things he would have never thought and was not as empathetic as before. I think it is safe to say that all survivors of the Holocaust went on to live their lives with a different mindset that others and had trouble relating to normal occurrences due to the horrible conditions they lived in.
In the camps, the prisoners were continuously being persecuted …show more content…
Mengele. Dr. Mengele was a German officer at Auschwitz and was often referred to as the “Angel of Death”. He is known for his horribly unethical experiments he did on his patients and immense number of bodies he killed in Auschwitz. Mengele treated the majority of his patients ruthlessly, with no remorse, and as if they were just objects for his destruction. He was also known for his bad temper and was seen beating prisoners with metal poles, burning them alive, or shooting them. The only patients he treated less horrifically were twins, which he found to be enticing. Mengele would provide them with clean clothes and regular meals in order to strengthen them, and once they were healthy he would perform horrific surgeries on them (Schmittroth, 315). How Dr. Mengele treated the prisoners in Auschwitz would have an extensive influence on the difficulties they had …show more content…
The food they were given was horrible and their living conditions even worse. Meals included watery soup, that was dirty, and a piece of bread and the meals were not given often. For Christmas and New Year’s they were given a “slightly less transparent soup” as a gift and got a break off work (Wiesel, 78). To the Nazis this was a great gift, and the prisoners did not argue, but their treatment was still unbelievably bad and the oppression never stopped. In the barracks, they slept on wooden boards, stacked throughout the block and housed 1,000 people in each (Schmittroth, 306). These barracks were often poorly made and would break in the night, sending prisoners toppling down onto others, making it impossible to get a good night’s sleep. When the prisoners escaped and could go back home and try to live normally, they found it extremely difficult to adjust. Even simple things were a challenge to the survivors and made transitioning hard. One survivor, Isabella Katz Leitner, said that they had to “learn how to live, how to hold a fork,” and had an even harder time trying to live with other people (Schmittroth,
In the camps, the prisoners were continuously being persecuted …show more content…
Mengele. Dr. Mengele was a German officer at Auschwitz and was often referred to as the “Angel of Death”. He is known for his horribly unethical experiments he did on his patients and immense number of bodies he killed in Auschwitz. Mengele treated the majority of his patients ruthlessly, with no remorse, and as if they were just objects for his destruction. He was also known for his bad temper and was seen beating prisoners with metal poles, burning them alive, or shooting them. The only patients he treated less horrifically were twins, which he found to be enticing. Mengele would provide them with clean clothes and regular meals in order to strengthen them, and once they were healthy he would perform horrific surgeries on them (Schmittroth, 315). How Dr. Mengele treated the prisoners in Auschwitz would have an extensive influence on the difficulties they had …show more content…
The food they were given was horrible and their living conditions even worse. Meals included watery soup, that was dirty, and a piece of bread and the meals were not given often. For Christmas and New Year’s they were given a “slightly less transparent soup” as a gift and got a break off work (Wiesel, 78). To the Nazis this was a great gift, and the prisoners did not argue, but their treatment was still unbelievably bad and the oppression never stopped. In the barracks, they slept on wooden boards, stacked throughout the block and housed 1,000 people in each (Schmittroth, 306). These barracks were often poorly made and would break in the night, sending prisoners toppling down onto others, making it impossible to get a good night’s sleep. When the prisoners escaped and could go back home and try to live normally, they found it extremely difficult to adjust. Even simple things were a challenge to the survivors and made transitioning hard. One survivor, Isabella Katz Leitner, said that they had to “learn how to live, how to hold a fork,” and had an even harder time trying to live with other people (Schmittroth,