What it was like...

Sweat drops glide smoothly down your face as you feel their familiar salty sting in your eye. “It’s been 3 days!” you moan in a dry raspy voice. Relief from this minor discomfort would be nice. But even if you could lift your arms to dry your face, or to plug your nose and stop the smell of death from entering your lungs it wouldn’t change anything, because lingering in the back of your mind is the one question that fear itself is even to afraid to ask: What is Auschwitz? The more you think about this the less sweat or the rotting dead bother you. As your stomach begins to toss you realize that it’s not the smell of death that causes you to want to vomit, but it is the fact that you feel your own death rapidly approaching that churns your insides like butter. As your vision gradually becomes enveloped in black you can faintly hear a child’s plea, “Daddy I’m so hungry! Will there be food where we’re going?” A smile creeps over your face. For the first time since the SS broke into your home you realize that it doesn’t matter. For the first time in years you have something to look forward to. Knowing you won’t live long enough to hear the fathers reply, you finally find comfort in death.

More than 2 millions souls were loaded onto Nazi cattle cars and transported to Auschwitz in this same manner. As far as records show, only 1% left there alive (University of Minnesota). The Nazi Holocaust was one of the most horrific acts of genocide committed in all of human history. Human beings were treated so poorly, and tortured so severely, that many begged for death and welcomed it like a long awaited friend. Since World War II there have been many other popular issues that have attracted much of the people’s time and interest; however, no such issue has ever been as grand or horrific as was the Jewish Holocaust.