Personal Narrative: The Reichstag Fire

It has been days. I stumble, foot over foot to the crack of sunlight that beams into the car. I feel the train rock back and forth, side to side as we tumble over the tracks to a “better life.” A better life. More bread. They care about us. I hear the screech as the cars stop as we are all tossed forward. “Welcome to Auschwitz, Jews.” I hear a man scream be strong. I hear the crack of a whip and gun shots. I know they lied.

On a cold fall morning, hundreds of Jewish families woke up to be told that they were to come with the Nazis and that they would be leaving their homes. No explanation, no clue as to where they are going to end up, they bagged up their necessities. The mothers and fathers carried bags upon bags of things that they believed that they were going to get to keep. The children cried, the mothers trembled in fear, while the fathers tried to hold their families together. Out on the cold streets they went, to wait. The Nazis were mean, strict, and rude. Telling the not to move or talk, having them stand never giving them a break. Basically treating them like a dog they were trying to teach a new trick. They taunted and made fun of them and laughed at their looks.

I have to admit that I had lost contact with my dear Jew friend, Aaron Bauer. It was unfortunate, but I sincerely believed that our decision was to lift each other’s burden and to protect this friendship. Integrating with one another had been a grave danger for both my wife and I, and Bauer understood our situations. I was no longer part of our secret Communist cell, for most of our Jewish members had dissolved into their separate ways following the aftermath of the Nuremberg Laws. Moreover, my wife and I had been busy with our full-time employment in the Volkswagen factory, for the KdF had promise us many trips and also the “People’s car.” There was time when I was excited about the KdF, but I immediately direct my thoughts to my Communists

This assignment gave me a deeper insight into the minds of the captured, abused, scarred prisoners who found themselves trapped behind the bars of Germans for no reasonable explanation at all. Completing this quote journal helped me realize that they didn't lose all of their humanity, the prisoners and Nazi's both. Although many German soldiers could care less about the thoughts and feelings of the Jews, some showed that their heart still had compassion, even if it was just a little bit. Riva was filled with despondency at times, yet her strength remained and she survived. The memories of her family was with her during the time she was held at camps, and the little bit of hope that they too could be alive still was a reason to keep herself

The lucid evidence of the physical and mental toll the camps took on the Jewish prisoner population successfully reinforces compassion, along with sympathy, within his readers for the situations the Jewish people in Germany had to face

This quote was pulled from a segment of the short story, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.” Alone, it is merely just a few disturbing words that may give the warm hearted reader some shivers. But behind these words is a detailed narrative of one day within the gruesome, horrific, violent, Nazi concentration camps; that would give even a cold hearted reader shivers. Tadeusz Borowski, the author of this fictional short story, uses his experiences from being held in a Nazi ran concentration camp, to deliver a detailed first person narrative of what transpired in Nazi Germany.

You hesitated at first, then gave me a small piece of chocolate. My eyes lighted up, and I beamed. You smiled, too. Why did you give me your only piece of chocolate? I know I looked horrendous, with ribs and elbows jutting from my tight frame of skin… but you did hesitate. What caused that hesitation? You and your fellow soldiers pitied us Jews, and we were rarely fed, so you must have known that too much food would have made me ill. It was just chocolate. Finally, are you still haunted by the visions of the concentration camps? The bodies dumped into mass graves, the barracks full of poor sick and dying souls, the ashes of the ones already lost… do these things still haunt you? These scars do not heal. I have not healed, so I suspect you have not,

Hunger. Pain. This is all the Jews feel as they walk through the mud and muck. “Will this ever end”, they think. A few days pass and there are less of them. They can see the smoke rise in the distance; smell the stench of burning flesh. Their bones stick out in sharp angles. Their stomachs ache with the need for food. Months pass and it’s the same routine. Walk. Pain. Work. Hunger. Sleep. Die. All these people know is this. They start to lose hope. Many have died. Many have lost all of their family members. Their children. They start to believe that it will never end. Then, salvation. Soldiers storm the camp. They gather them up. They save them. This is what millions of people went through during World War II, when the Nazis forced them into

There is is a period in time that makes everyone one tense up at the mere mention of it, this era is the Holocaust. Thought many know the basics behind the horrors of this time period, not many could recount the details of the horror for those living in the effected areas during this time. Maus, by Art Spiegelman, gives a unique look into the bone chilling time period, telling the tale of the author’s father as a jewish man during World War II. In his tale we see not only the horrors of the concentration camps, but the life on the run he had before he was captured. One of the most shocking parts of his story was how the Nazi Germans were not his biggest fear, instead he was terrified by his fellow Poles. The Polish population had no qualm turning on their jewish neighbors, resulting in some of the most horrifying images. The high tensions running through the nation of Poland caused so much heart ache and pain for all members of the society in the time surrounding World War II.

The Reichstag is a building in Berlin, which housed the meeting place for the legislature of the German government around the time when Hitler gained the power in the office. It was burnt in February 23, 1933. Hitler used this event to give him more power by blaming the fault on the Communist Party, which at the time was a rival party to the Nazis. In fact, Hitler was able to destroy the strongest enemy and thus controlled all the power in Germany at the time. Therefore, the Nazi government continued to develop until it reached its peak in WWII.

Weeks later, tired, cold, and hungry the Jews and I used every ounce of energy to get up for roll call. As the officers were calling names, I noticed the new arrivals. One in particular stood out to me; her name was Izabella. She was with her father and a littler sibling, but I couldn’t tell if the child was male or female. After roll the guard demanded us to clean up the whole camp, including our barracks at once. After our rushed cleaning, orders were barked to get on the train. We were headed to Buchenwald. We were forcefully thrown in, and the train slowly started to crawl away. I looked over my shoulder to see my father, unconscious, on a pile of cold, dead Jews. As we sat in silence, a quiet whimper reached my ears, and when I turned

Second, I am afraid my imagination will put me in the camps with the victims. I will smell the smoke, experience for myself the horror of murdered children; those tiny hands that might fit cautiously into mine. A child may say, "Save me," and I will be helpless. I might succeed so well in identifying with those who lived through the selections that I will have to say, "Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever" (32). A memory: Once after having read Night, I went home and was asked to start a fire in the fireplace. I couldn't do it. The bricks of my hearth had become a crematorium. I was angry, then, at myself, at Nazis, at Wiesel, at my family for wanting a fire . . . at God.

Then on a dark, depressed friday in august, what was left of the Jewish people was forced into a small, rundown suburb in Kaunas. Jews were packed in like sardines, surrounded by chain link fences and barbed wire. Armed soldiers acting like sentries were stationed at the borders of the suburb, letting Jews in and stopping those who attempted to leave, hardly ever taking them

Words cannot describe how terrified I am right now. For my people, the Jews, it is a horrific time in Germany, specifically in Berlin. Hitler, the Nazi leader, blames the misfortunes of Germany on the Jewish people. My family must wear bands around our arms so that people know that we are Jewish. Also, I no longer attend school because I was kicked out because of my ethnicity. My father’s toilet paper store has run out of business because Germans do not want to support Jewish businesses. Every day the Nazis impose new restrictions on the Jewish people.

“Get Up you no good Jews.” I sprung up out of thee 2 inch thick mattress. I checked who the guard was this morning and it was guard 1543 the same one as yesterday. I climbed out of my bunk bed I slept on the top because I was a kid. At 14 I thought that I should be considered as an adult, but not in this concentration camp. I walked around a little bit to lose up my stiff weak muscles, even though it didn’t do much it still felt good.I woke up the others in my cell that weren't awake which was everyone except for me and my mom. Her and I were very light sleepers, we would wake up when the first drop of a rainstorm fell, or a little mice would make a wrong turn in the cell and bump into the metal pole of the bed ever so slightly. I woke everyone up in my cell in the same order every day going from the person that took the longest to wake up to the person who would get up fairly quickly. Everyone was up and the adults were making small talk and the kids were playing a game we called Ala. The gates opened for breakfast and we all knew it was time for the escape. `