Night

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Recommended: an enquiry into the treatments of jews in the nazi Germany

Night
From the View of an S.S. Officer

This whole situation started out simple enough. The men and myself first moved into a little town called Sighet. The people there seemed so naive. None of them realized what was about to happen; none of them realized what happened when the Germans move into town.
We first started by imprisoning the officials and made all the Jews were yellow stars. The Jews were then moved into a very small ghetto and cramped quarters. It was obvious that none of them had heard of the horror of the concentration camps and what awaited them once they left the safety of their homes. Some of the officers and I tried to be nice to the Jews because I, personally, hated carrying around this gun. Once you were in the camp the site of these officers holding these weapons struck fear into the hearts of all in the camp.
We had finally gotten all of the people of the town of Sighet onto the train and had started the journey towards Auschwitz. The condition on the train is something I don’t think I could have stood for. The Germans were put in charge of the train in the middle of the journey. The officers were told to collect any valuables from the people on the train and if they refused to yield their valuables, they were to be shot. As I have said I hated carrying around this gun but I did have a job to do and I was willing to follow orders if need be. Luckily I never had to unload a single shot on that train. Some people on the train were in very bad shape. They were hallucinating and many of them simply couldn’t take the heat and the smell any longer. They were beginning to go crazy. The officers had a meeting and we were told to tell them that they were all just going to a labor camp and the families would be kept together. The lying was also a normal part of my job. Little did they know that they were going to a terrible place in which the males and females would be separated and all of the people had a slim chance of even making past the inspections.
Before arriving at Auschwitz we came to a “filtering” camp called Birkenau. The men and women were separated and taken to separated and taken to the barracks. I hear the prisoners talking sometimes. Some of them have been in this camp for a while and some of them are frien...

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...d. There was still yet another selection where the weak were eliminated. Once we got to the camp everyone was put on the train to what turned out to be the last torture test. In my opinion, if you survived everything up to and including this train ride, you deserved to live. In a very uncivilized some the other S.S. officers threw bread into the trains just to watch the men kill their own fathers’ just to get a morsel of bread.
Buchenwald was very cold and miserable. The same treatment went on for days. The Americans were said to be getting close to the camp. I had to make a hard decision, stay and follow orders to kill every Jew in the camp, or flee and save my own life. Every officer chose to stay. Very many Jews were killed and one day, when the Americans were getting very close all of the S.S. officers left the camp, leaving the Jews behind.
I never heard what happened to the Jews in Buchenwald. I also never forgave myself for the heartless murders my officers and I committed. That time was one of the worse times in history just because of the millions of Jews that were killed and I regret to say, I had a part in it.

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