The Holocaust: A Literary Analysis

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Living through genocide is a horrific tragedy that no one should ever have to endure. While there have been numerous genocides within the last century, the holocaust was a genocide that killed over 12 million innocent people and segregated them by religion, sex and age. Since the end of the holocaust, many survivors wrote their stories accounting the horrific lives they led, while some eliminated parts of their story, others felt that it was necessary to show the entirety of what had occurred. With these first hand accounts, the reader is able to see the differences between how men and women lived their everyday lives as well as how they were treated by Hitler’s regime. In Elie Wiesel’s, Night, and Sara Nomberg-Przytyk’s, True Tales from a…show more content…
With that being said, many died before being able to account for what happened to them in the holocaust. Those who survived portrayed stories that were different then the men who were living within the camps during the same time. For Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, living with other women in Auschwitz, changed her life forever. After initially entering the camp, she soon saw the transition of women turning into slaves, “in a few hours we were robbed of everything that had been ours personally. We were shown here that in Auschwitz we were just numbers, without faces or soles” (Nomberg-Przytyk 15). Being “robbed” of everything she once had, Sara realized the reality of her new life as a slave. Being a woman one of the most identifying features would their hair, while in Night, Elie got his hair ripped out at the barbers, this is also what happened to Sara and the women whom she lived with. “The shearing of the sheep had started, and with scissors so dull that they tore bunches of hair out of our heads. There was no difference between sheep, and us however: The sheep bleated as they were being shorn, but we stood there in silence with tears streaming down our faces” (Nomberg-Przytyk 14) by comparing the women to animals, the author is trying to show the reader how horribly they were…show more content…
By living with other women in the camps, Sara saw a lot of families on the verge of splitting, “she wanted to die with her mother. They tore her from her mother by force” (Nomberg-Przytyk 34). Death was an everyday occurrence within the camps, after a while people got used to seeing dead bodies, felt that they were next. With the number of deaths racking each day, others were pregnant and delivered their babies within the camps of the holocaust. Since Sara worked within the hospital of the camp she witnessed the birth of a baby who should have been born dead. While the baby was in good health, the person who delivered the child generally killed the baby and announced them dead so that the women could go back to a “normal” life within the camp. With the mother insisting that the camp would make arrangements for her and her baby, she showed off her new prized possession as if she was not a prisoner. After showing her baby to the “angel of death” Dr. Mengele, she was soon killed with her child just like the rest of the women who delivered within the campgrounds. Wanting to be “humanitarian”, Menegele insisted that mothers would die along side their children, “it would not be humanitarian to send a child to the ovens without permitting the mother to be there to witness the child’s death” (Nomberg-Przytyk 69). The author addresses the concept of

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