I would say that there were upstanders in the memoir. One group that I can think of are the Sonderkommandos who blew up one of the crematories and fought against the Germans (Lengyel, 2014, 175). However, I think the upstanders at Auschwitz were few. This is because protesting against the Germans would certainly mean instant death. Some people would disobey orders just to help a person up and be shot on site. One such example is Olga’s husband, Miklos. So, only those who did not fear death could be upstanders in Auschwitz and Birkenau. I would say the rescuers and the resistors were both the same people. These people were those who took part in the underground at Auschwitz and Birkenau. They were the ones that spread news about the war to
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The prisoners in Auschwitz and Birkenau lived in a perpetual state of poverty that is incomparable with anything imaginable. Some would even call the concentration camps a form of “hell.” The inmates ate almost no food, performed hard manual labor, and had almost no clothing to wear. It is hard to imagine any conditions worse than the ones these inmates had to live in.
Another theme of this memoir is death. Many people were killed during the Holocaust. Inmates were shot, gassed, starved, or driven to the point of suicide in the memoir. Many inmates also died due to illnesses and the insufficient medical supplies to treat them. Olga states “In less than a quarter of a year the Germans had ‘liquidated’ more than 1,300,000 persons at Auschwitz-Birkenau” (Lengyel, 2014, p. 83). So much death occurred during the Holocaust, which is why the theme of death played an important role in the memoir.
At Auschwitz and Birkenau, there were differences in how the genders were treated. Food was one big difference. The men received potatoes while the woman did not get them often. Many times, the men would use this fact to their advantage such as Tadek offering food in exchange for sexual favors from women (Lengyel, 2014, p. 60). This unequal distribution of food made women give themselves up just to be able to eat. So, each gender was treated differently within Auschwitz and
The prisoners in Auschwitz and Birkenau lived in a perpetual state of poverty that is incomparable with anything imaginable. Some would even call the concentration camps a form of “hell.” The inmates ate almost no food, performed hard manual labor, and had almost no clothing to wear. It is hard to imagine any conditions worse than the ones these inmates had to live in.
Another theme of this memoir is death. Many people were killed during the Holocaust. Inmates were shot, gassed, starved, or driven to the point of suicide in the memoir. Many inmates also died due to illnesses and the insufficient medical supplies to treat them. Olga states “In less than a quarter of a year the Germans had ‘liquidated’ more than 1,300,000 persons at Auschwitz-Birkenau” (Lengyel, 2014, p. 83). So much death occurred during the Holocaust, which is why the theme of death played an important role in the memoir.
At Auschwitz and Birkenau, there were differences in how the genders were treated. Food was one big difference. The men received potatoes while the woman did not get them often. Many times, the men would use this fact to their advantage such as Tadek offering food in exchange for sexual favors from women (Lengyel, 2014, p. 60). This unequal distribution of food made women give themselves up just to be able to eat. So, each gender was treated differently within Auschwitz and