The Holocaust is a history of overwhelming horror and enduring sorrow. I can't even imagine having to go through something as tragic as the Holocaust. However, at times I have wondered what it would be like if I were a Jewish girl, living during the Holocaust, and sent to a camp. What would I have done? I have thought that maybe I would just kill myself. What's the point on trying to live? How would I be able to handle seeing people disappear day by day and watching everyone fall apart? It would be impossible and to live each day in fear that I may be next, I would just die from being so scared. However, I also think I would want to try and live through each day, just to show the Nazi's that they couldn't ruin me. I would want to show them I was strong, even if I were weak. I wouldn't want to let them get the best of me. Yet, honestly I don't know how I would react. I would have to be faced with the situation to know. "If we ask today, sometimes with a faint if se!.
lf-righteous air of disapproval, why Jews in the camps or ghetto's behaved the way they did, the answer, more often than not, lies locked in the heart bursting with fear or dread. It is an answer beyond judgment - but not beyond compassion"(Langer 36-37). After reading works of literature by survivors, I was in shock by the way some Jews acted towards one another and even more, betrayed there fellow Jews. They behaved in such a way in which, I would hope if I were in their situation, I would not do what they did. The novel, Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and the short story "The Block of Death" by Sarah Nomberg-Przytyk, are two works of literature that portray how the Jews behaved.
In the novel, Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi tells us, in vivid detail, his life while he was in the camp. Levi was a young Italian chemist, only twenty-four, when he was captured by the Fascist militia in 1943. From that day, he no longer had a name, instead there was a number tattooed on his arm and that was how he was identified.