Fear and Expectation
Primo Levi’s personal account in Survival in Auschwitz includes the feelings that people had when they knew they had been selected to be killed in the gas chambers the following day. I was not aware that people knew beforehand that they had been selected, I thought that they had no idea until they began marching towards the chamber or in some cases until they were locked inside the chamber naked with hundreds of other people. I can not even imagine the panic that came over people when they realized that they were about to be killed and there was absolutely no way to escape this. It is even more difficult to imagine the feelings that one would have if they knew that they had been selected days before they were to be sent to the gas chambers.
Beppo who is twenty years old and is going to the gas-chamber the day after tomorrow and knows it and lies there looking fixedly at the light without saying anything and without even thinking anymore?-Primos Levi, Survival in Auschwitz.
Primo Levi could never truly know how this young man was feeling because he was never selected but he can definitely relate to the situation more than readers of his work. It is quite possible that Beppo has completely given up all hope of surviving the concentration camp, he knows that he is meant to die and he seems to have a desire to go to the gas chambers with what little dignity he has left.
These helpless and fearful feelings experienced by Beppo before he was to be sent to the gas chambers reminds me of the feelings that people may experience just before they are about to go into war. The terrified soldiers about to storm the beaches of Normandy during World War II came to mind when I read this portion of Levi’s account.
Primo Levi’s chapter about October 1944 took plus just a few short months after Allied forces invaded Normandy Beach on June 6, 1944. Levi was aware that the war front was close because he could hear the action and he could also feel it in the ground. I don’t believe that he was quite aware of what the Allied forces had to endure in order to defeat The Third Reich and liberate the concentration camps.
Beppo was only twenty years old when he was sent to his death in the gas chamber, his feelings about this horrible demise can be compared to Frank Beetle as he was about to storm the beach of Normandy with the 1st Division.
I’m trying to think up a word that might sum it up and I really can’t think, it wasn’t fear because I had never fought before. So I really didn’t know what to expect. Anticipation perhaps. After a while I really didn’t think that much about it. When we got on board the boat, after a while it was almost like a dream that I was in and I’ve never quite been able to find the words to explain the state of mind that I was in, but you’re talking about prior to getting on board the boats in the camp and I think it certainly wasn’t fear, not because I’m courageous but because I didn’t know any better. If I had known better it probably would have been fear. It wasn’t fear, it was expectation I guess.-Interview with Frank Beetle
Though Frank did not experience fear up his arrival in Normandy he did have expectations as Beppo likely did in Auschwitz. Beppo knew that he would be walking to his death and that he would cease to exist after his experience in the gas chamber. Frank did not know what to expect, he knew where he was going and what the mission was but he did know what the outcome of his life would be. Frank was as prepared as he could possibly be given the situation:
But of course we knew by this time what was happening and we knew where we were going, and what we were going to do. I mean there was no doubt about that. -Frank Beetle
Frank Beetle did not share Beppo’s experience in the concentration camp but he was in a sequester camp in which he could not leave for over a month. He describes this like a prison camp and claims that nobody can get out of the camp a month before the invasion of Normandy. He also claims that military equipment and personnel took up every inch of space as far as the eye could see. When they boarded the boats that would take them to Normandy they were crammed in just like the inmates in the concentration camp. Though the experiences of Frank Beetle in the invasion of Normandy and Beppo in his iminate death in Auschwitz are completely different their feelings can be compared. The two situation are closely related because the Allied forces had to conquer Axis troops at Normandy in order to eventually liberate the concentration camps. It’s a shame that Beppo’s death occurred months after the Allies had this important victory and just shortly before the camps were to be liberated.
Blog Comments
1. http://genawh.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/u-s-war-propaganda/#comment-12
2. http://giordim.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/memory-of-the-camps/#comment-7
3. http://warvspeace.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/tell-the-story/#comment-7
4. http://olsonkr.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/pure-ignorance/#comment-4
5. http://brenbernard.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/the-whole-truth/#comment-7
6. http://thebore44.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/fastforwarding-through-life/#comment-6
7. http://genawh.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/man-vs-beast/#comment-13
8. http://krygierj.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/its-all-coming-back-to-me-now/#comment-9
9. http://genawh.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/playing-the-role-of-man/#comment-28
10. http://thebore44.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/times-have-changed/#comment-15
Prisoners of War
Concentration Camps in World War 2 Europe were not only used to exterminate hundreds of thousands of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals, they were also used to house prisoners of war captured by the Axis Powers. During World War 2 runaway Prisoners of War were often sent to work in concentration camps as punishment. The prisoners were often in such terrible condition from capture and travel that they did not live for long once they reached the camps. One of the camps used to house these prisoners of war was Majdanek:
During the entire period of its existence, the Majdanek camp was under construction. Construction on the camp began in October 1941 with the arrival of about 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war. Most of the Soviet prisoners of war at Majdanek were too weak to work; virtually all were dead by February 1942.- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Unlike the hundreds of stories told by Jewish Holocaust survivors, it was extremely difficult to find any personal accounts of Prisoners of War who had survived a concentration camp during the Holocaust, in fact my search came up completely empty. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that the Prisoners of War were in such terrible shape when they arrived at the concentration camps. Soviet Union soldiers were not the only Prisoners of War who were punished in the concentration camps. Mauthausen also contributed to the torture of captured soldiers in the Soviet army, but records also show that Prisoners of War from Allied armies were sent there:
Among those prisoners who were registered: in 1944, 47 Allied military personnel (39 Dutchmen, 7 British soldiers and 1 U.S. soldier), all of them agents of the British Secret Operations Executive. Further, the SS transported other thousands of prisoners to Mauthausen to be murdered without ever being registered as prisoners in the camp. -United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Compared to many other concentration camps Mauthausen housed few women as well as Jewish people in general:
An estimated 197,464 prisoners passed through the Mauthausen camp system between August 1938 and May 1945. At least 95,000 died there. More than 14,000 were Jewish. -United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Prisoners of War during the Holocaust were treated just as poorly as the Jewish people in concentration camps, the only notable difference is that the POW’s were in worse condition than most Jews upon arrival at the camps. The Prisoners of War likely had feelings similar to that of Vladek in Maus 2: And Here My Troubles Began:
“It wasn’t so easy like you think. Everyone was so starving and frightened, and tired. They couldn’t believe what’s in front of their eyes. And the Jews lived always with hope. They hoped the Russians can come before the Geman bullet arrived from the gun into their head.”-Maus 2.
We can really only assume that the Prisoners of War during the Holocaust endured circumstances comparable to the situations that plagued Jews at the time. Jews and POWs all endured the concentration camps but we have no personal accounts written by a POW who survived. Based on the information that we have about the horrors faced by the Jews in the concentration camps we can come to the conclusion that the trials faced by World War 2 POWs were far more disastrous and deadly than those faced by POWs in the War on Iraq.
Becoming a Prisoner of War is no longer feared more than death as it was by many in World War 1, World War 2, and Vietnam. Clearly this is not a desirable situation but the real danger and trauma occurs when soldiers are on missions. They are more likely to die during combat than to be murdered after capture. POW Patrick Miller was captured with Jessica Lynch and the 507th Maintenance Company only a few days after the War on Iraq began:
Miller, 28, says that as a captive, he was not roughed up, but some of the guards asked questions. “There was one who asked me why I came to Iraq, and I told him that I was told to come. He was like, ‘Why didn’t you just tell them no?’ I told him that if I tell them no, I go to jail. He couldn’t understand that.” Miller has an injury that continues to plague him, nerve damage he suffered when his arms were tied behind his back with a rubber iv tube—and an Iraqi soldier was stepping on his elbow as he lay on the floor of a truck. Miller says he believes it was an unintentional act in a crowded truck. -Patrick Miller, U.S. News and World Report.
The media covered the events that occurred after the 507th was captured very closely. Jessica Lynch was critically injured in combat, but not by her captors. She was held in an Iraqi hospital but received care for her injuries while she was held captive:
“I learned to put trust in [the Iraqi hospital staff]. I kind of had to,” Lynch says. “If I didn’t, I felt like they could have easily said, ‘Here, just take her; do what you want with her.’”-Jessica Lynch, U.S. News and World Report.
While the experiences of Prisoners of War in Iraq are definitely less than ideal they are difficult to compare to the experiences of World War 2 Prisoners of War. We know little about these men other than the fact that most of them died shortly after their arrival at the concentration camps. We can only imagine the horrors that they must have faced based on personal accounts of Jewish prisoners in concentration camps.
Personal Accounts of Jessica Lynch and Patrick Miller
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Maus 2: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman
Can a Soldier Just Walk Away?
Ever since I first picked up Number the Stars in my elementary school library at the age of ten I have had an ever growing curiosity when it comes to the Holocaust. Most of the people in my life can’t stand reading about this devastating event that took place in World War 2, and what they can not stand even more is seeing pictures of the victims who had to live during the gruesome genocide. I have read any bit of information about the Holocaust that I can get my hands on. I find the photos extremely interesting, no matter how much they sicken me. Part of me believes that it must be very morbid to feel the way that I do about the Holocaust, constantly wanting to learn more, read more, see more. I think that my fascination with the events of the Holocaust stems from the most sincere respect that I have for all of the people who lived and died in the concentration camps. I feel that we owe it to them to learn everything that we can about the way they were treated and the inhuman circumstances that they endured. Of all the literature, films, and photos that I have viewed about the Holocaust, the documentary by Alfred Hitchcock was by far the most life altering, devastating thing that I have ever seen. Over 24 hours have passed since our class watched the film and I still feel as though I would not be able to discuss it. I am glad that I watched it, this documentary was something that everyone needs to see in order to have a slight understanding of what happened, but afterwards I am fairly certain I must have looked as if I were there watching the events unfold myself.
Watching this film inspired a search to find out more about Nazi soldiers during World War 2. I was unable to find hard facts about what the army was like for men in Germany at the time. I imagine that the men who enlisted would have been called a Nazi soldier immediately because Adolf Hitler would not allow anyone to support any other political parties. A few years before World War 2 people had difficulty finding employment because of the German Great Depression and this was part of the reason so many men enlisted. Hitler denounced the Versailles Treaty that ended World War 1 because of the limitations it put on the numbers of the German military. Men had great reason to enlist but I had trouble finding any information about why Nazi soldiers continued even after Hitler called for the systematic killing of Jewish people. Were these men threatened, scared, or just doing their job? I have trouble believing that so many people agreed with Adolf Hitler. He was a very powerful speaker, but did his words really shape the ideals of the people, and turn soldiers into killing machines?
During Alfred Hitchcock’s documentary of the Holocaust it is so hard to tell if the S.S. Guards at Bergen Belsen feel any remorse for what they have done. They were punished by carrying thousands of bodies into mass graves for days. Yet most of them continued to drag the people, hurling them into the pit one by one. If they felt badly at all it did not show in their faces. The male and female S.S. Guards seem to treat the burying of these bodies as another day at work. It is so hard to believe that this is the only punishment most of them receive after their actions lead to the deaths of millions.
Back to my thoughts about why the Nazi soldiers did not just quit. It is very difficult to tell with no hard evidence whether or not they would be punished for walking away from this gruesome task. In the United States there are many requirements when entering the United States Army regarding weight, physical condition, and education. As difficult as it may be to get into the Army it is even more difficult to get out. You can not just leave, you must complete your duty to your country, and only very drastic offenses will get you kicked out. Iraqi soldiers do not have the same rules and regulations that the United States Army follows. They are free to leave whenever they have the desire and they are not punished for this. So what was it like for the Nazi soldiers? I imagine their regulations were more strict than ones followed by United States soldiers today. So many of these men who joined the army in order to support their families were likely stuck there when Adolf Hitler began his reign as chancellor of Germany and called for the systematic killing of Jews, and any other “undesirables”.
