Lying and stealing is always morally wrong, and the reason Shlomo lies and steals is so he can survive. This is the only acceptable reason for anyone to lie and steal. Every person in that camp did everything to survive, and this is seen often throughout the book. For example, Shlomo explains that he tended to stay in a group with his friends when getting food, the group will then share what they got. This was so no individual was made someone else’s victim (Venezia 139-40). Unfortunately for Shlomo he ended up in a group of five other Russians one day, and of course the Russians tried to steal from him. The Russian prisoners were just trying to get a little bit of food to survive another day. When a person is stripped of their humanity, there is no time to think if they are doing something wrong. The prisoners in these camps have to survive not matter what, this is their goal, and they will do anything to achieve it. Just like how Shlomo lied about how many parcels he had when he was on the train to Auschwitz. This was enough for everyone on his cart, which no one died in, but in the other carts people did (Venezia 33). It does not matter if someone is lying or stealing …show more content…
The reason the Germans gave food to the prisoners is so they can live and do hard labor until they are too weak and die. Most of the prisoners were there to improve the camp and make sure it keeps running, like the job of the Sonderkommando. The weak were killed right away and the one able to do any job were kept alive. As Shlomo states “All of the people who couldn’t walk any more, the sick, the handicapped, and the elderly, were loaded into the trucks and then unloaded in the Crematorium yard” (76). The Germans need people to work for them, and needed them alive, so the Germans gave them food. During the death march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the Germans most likely did not want to leave a trail of bodies. They also wanted to keep the prisoners alive so they can keep doing work for
Being confined in a concentration camp was beyond unpleasant. Mortality encumbered the prisons effortlessly. Every day was a struggle for food, survival, and sanity. Fear of being led into the gas chambers or lined up for shooting was a constant. Hard labor and inadequate amounts of rest and nutrition took a toll on prisoners. They also endured beatings from members of the SS, or they were forced to watch the killings of others. “I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time” (Night Quotes). Small, infrequent, rations of a broth like soup left bodies to perish which in return left no energy for labor. If one wasn’t killed by starvation or exhaustion they were murdered by fellow detainees. It was a survival of the fittest between the Jews. Death seemed to be inevitable, for there were emaciated corpses lying around and the smell...
The conditions were OK as a concentration camp, however as more prisoners came, it drastically worsened. There was “overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, the lack of adequate food, water, and shelter.” Near “1945, the food was a watery soup with rotten vegetables.” (Bauer, Yehuda p.359) People were “dumped behind barbed wire without food or water and left to die.” (ushmm.org) It was so overcrowded that corpses were piled out in the open without being buried.
While obtaining food seemed to be the entire purpose of life for the people imprisoned in the camps, it often killed more people than it saved. Though focusing on food seemed like a logical thing to do when you are being starved, it was not always very effective in helping people survive. There are many situations in the book illustrating how living for the sole purpose of acquiring food—under any condition—could turn out to be lethal.
Food depravation is a method that people use to affect the human spirit in a negative way. In the story Maus by Art Spiegelman, food is used to make the prisoners weak. For example, at the concentration camp Art’s dad is talking to his fellow prisoner Mandelbaum “I spilled most of my soup too. When I asked for more, they BEAT me" (Spiegelman pg. 29). This affects the human spirit because when people typically ask for more food, they don't get beaten. Food is also used as a currency in the camps. In this scene, Art’s dad is talking to the gestapo and the gestapo wants Vladek to fix his boot; “Can you fix this? I’ll give you a day’s ration of bread. For a day’s ration of bread I can fix anything! Next day I had the boot ready for this gestapo….Hmm. He left the boot and went without one word. And he came back with a whole sausage. You did a good job” (Spiegelman pg. 61). Food is used as currency because in this case Vladek had a skill of fixing boots and his reward for doing a good job was a whole sausage. This shows how valuable food is in the concentration camps. In the story Farewell to Manzanar, food is also used to destroy the human spirit. Jeanne, the author, is being fed by the staff at the camp and her meal was ".... scoops of canned Vienna sausage, canned string beans, steamed rice that had been cooked too long, and on top of the rice a serving of canned apricots. The Caucasian servers were thinking that...
This massive and rapid deportation led to problems for the Germans. Soon after the deportation began it was determined that Auschwitz was not prepared to kill as many people as they had planned. The train tracks were extended into the Birkenau camp so that the Jews could be brought closer to the gas chambers. An agreement was reached with the railroad officials to alter the train schedule to suit their needs. On “alternate days two trains of deportees, then three trains, should be dispatched.”
While being forced to live in Auschwitz they endured many cruel and harsh punishments. The main form of punishment was the gas chambers. These chambers were cells that were made underground and were able to be sealed. Zyklon-B was the poison used to gas and kill the Jewish people. “It takes about 10 minutes to kill 2,000 to 3,000 people in the gas chamber.” (Saldinger p.57) After gassing they would then be extracted from the chamber and taken to the crematorium where the bodies would be disposed of. Sometimes it wasn’t even the guards who would dispose of the bodies, most of the time it was the prisoners who were forced to extract their own people from the chambers. This was just one of the many forms of punishment; there were many more and some were just as bad.
The sleeping arrangement were poor. Their bed was made from thin straw and cardboard, they had old blankets (38). Early in the morning, prisoner are awoken and rush into the freezing cold in order to get morning bread. Prisoners think that the people next to them have a bigger piece of bread they will trade it. But in reality, the piece are almost the same size. In Monowitz-Buna concentration camp, bread is money to prisoners, there a lot of bargaining and trading happening
According to the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 960,000 Jews died at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. Thousands of these victims died of hunger; in fact, many of those that died of hunger may have been as a result of fasting for Jewish holidays such as Yom Kippur. The prisoners of Auschwitz should not have fasted during Yom Kippur due to their severe malnutrition and the strain of performing tiring work.
Individuals were instructed to complete a variety of tasks, from loading heavy packages to trucks to disposing the dead corpses from the killing centers. People worked from morning to night, with the mere hopes of staying alive. They were rarely provided with any food to fill their stomachs or water to quench their thirsts as the main character in This Way for Gas Ladies and Gentlemen says, “It is hot, terribly hot. Our throats are dry; each word hurts. Anything for a sip of water! Faster, faster, so that it is over, so that we may rest. When will this tragedy end?” (Tadeusz 10). The main character expresses his devastated state and tiredness in working endlessly in the concentration camp. He refers to his situation as a “tragedy” and already views humanity as a lost cause. Similarly in Night, Eliezer’s father is simply blessed by the consumption of water after a long day of labor, as Eliezer says, “I shall never forget the gratitude that shone in his eyes when he swallowed this beverage. The gratitude of a wounded animal” (Wiesel 106-107). Basic necessities such as water were considered as valuable resources to the individuals, as they could not easily acquire them at their own expense. Despite the arduous work, some were grateful for the mere existence to do labor, as one individual says, “Working like a neglected pig was better than inhaling those toxicated gas
The Europeans had bad concentration camps. They would barely feed the prisoners, and would work them to the bone. “Before being sent to a camp, a captured prisoner of
Jewish people weren’t the only ones sent to concentration camps. People such as people with disabilities, Homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, and Socialists (Byers.p.12). Everyone that was sent to concentration camps was sent via train cars (www.historychannel.com). They had no food, water, or restrooms for up to 18 days. Many people died from the lack of food and water (Byers, p.15).
The Jews were only fed bread and soup. It gets to the point where everything revolves around food and each person’s own survival. For example, on page 104, Elie’s father claims that the other prisoners were beating him. Elie’s then says, “I began to abuse his neighbors.
Have you ever wondered how nutrition and calories benefit the human body? Calories and nutrition are very important to the growing body of a teenager. During the Holocaust, many prisoners in concentration camps were not given the sufficient amount of food in order to have a proper diet and receive proper nutrition. Eliezer Wiesel was one of the many prisoners in the Holocaust. The deprivation of calories and nutrition had its effects on Elie.
Food is essential to basic life. It provides people with the energy to think, speak, walk, talk, and breathe. In preparation for the Jews deportation from the ghettos of Transylvania, “the (Jewish) women were busy cooking eggs, roasting meat, and baking cakes”(Wiesel, 13). The Jewish families realized how crucial food was to their lives even before they were faced with the daily condition of famine and death in the concentration camps. The need for food was increased dramatically with the introduction of the famine-like conditions of the camps. Wiesel admitted that, although he was incredibly hungry, he had refused to eat the plate of thick soup they served to the prisoners on the first day of camp because of his nature of being a “spoiled child”. But his attitude changed rapidly as he began to realize that his life span was going to be cut short if he continued to refuse to eat the food they served him. “By the third day, I (Elie Wiesel) was eating any kind of soup hungrily” (Wiesel, 40). His desire to live superseded his social characteristic of being “pampered”. Remarque also uses his characters to show to how a balanced diet promotes a person’s good health. Paul Bäumer uses food to encourage Franz Kemmerich, his sick friend, “eat decently and you’ll soon be well again…Eating is the main thing” (Remarque, 30). Paul Bäumer feels that good food can heal all afflictions. The bread supply of the soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front was severely threatened when the rats became more and more numerous.
By early 1939, only about 16 percent of Jewish breadwinners had steady employment. Once general food rations began, Jews received more reduced rations than others. This further limited the time Jews had to buy food and supplies and restricted them from going to certain stores. As a result of the rations, Jewish homes often were left without the basic essentials of living (www.ushmm.org). In the camps, the prisoners had mealtimes which were the most important part of the day. In the morning, the prisoners got an imitation of coffee or herbal tea. For lunch, they ate watery soup and were lucky to get a potato peel or a turnip. For dinner, they received a piece of black bread that weighed 300 grams, a tiny piece of sausage or margarine, and marmalade or cheese. The bread was supposed to last the prisoners until the morning so they would try to hide it with they while they slept (17thdivision.tripod.com). The SS soldiers were paid anywhere from 2,160 reichsmarks (the old form of German currency), to 10,600 reichsmarks depending on their ranks (en.wikipedia.org). For their meals, they were given 700 to 750 grams of bread and 125 to175 grams of vegetables. Also, they received 15 grams of jam or honey, and 5 grams of