Essay about Eli- Coming of age in the Holocaust - 914 Words

ELLI- Coming of age in the Holocaust. Elli, her mother and all of the prisoners they meet all have to undergo numerous physical and psychological hardships when they are forced into the concentration camps. They are treated like cattle on their way to the slaughterhouse when they are taken from their houses to the ghetto, then to the synagogue, and eventually to Auschwitz, the death camp. The majority of suffering that was inflicted on Elli and her associates was physically inflicted, this was in the various forms of: beatings, rapes, murders, hard labor, and also subjective forms such as being exposed to diseases. The Germans also toyed with different ploys to beat the Jews, such as sterilization. This is demonstrated in Chapter†¦show more content†¦Likewise, in the winter they are given little protection from the elements, in the barracks they are only given two blankets per five people, one to lay on and the other to cover themselves with. Being exposed to the kind of horror that Elli was, you can expect her to have many problems. She has to witness people being shot, beaten, executed, demoralised, tortured, and tormented. Many times it is her who is the victim in these scenarios, such as in Chapter Twenty-seven when Elli tries to protect her mother from being beaten by the female guard. Elli loses all common sense at this point and lets her emotions take over her, and as her punishment she is savagely beaten by the guard as well. After witnessing so much death, pain, and suffering Elli would have been scarred for life. We see a classic example of this when we meet amp;quot;Felicia the Blockalteste.amp;quot; The German’s that killed her family tormented her and later she started to work for them. She was trying to get some blood redemption by being so harsh to the Jewish prisoners, even though she was Jewish herself. In the death camps, as well as much physical abuse, they were also the victims of constant moral abuse. For example, the male guards were always calling them amp;quot;Blode Lumpenamp;quot; which means amp;quot;Idiotic Whoresamp;quot;, also amp;quot;Blode Schweineamp;quot; meaning amp;quot;IdioticShow MoreRelatedThe And The Holocaust : A Breach Of Faith2649 Words   |  11 Pages Teaching the Holocaust The reign of the Holocaust took place between the years of 1933 to 1945, where Jews were persecuted, starved, and murdered by the Nazis. It was December 17, 1942, when the United States joined the Allies to condemn Nazi Germany’s â€Å"bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination of the Jews† (FDR and the Holocaust, FDR Presidential Library and Museum). The thirty-second president of the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that rather than saving more Jews