Survival in Auschwitz: Journal #0

The video I saw in class was quite a shock to me, even though I probably knew much information I encountered throughout seeing the video. I was previously quite informed about much of the atrocities of the Nazis, but they seem to be so cruel and inhumane that they shock me every time I see them. The fact that one group of people can hate another like the Nazis did was unbelievable, and their atrocities are even more inconceivable.
It is said in the video that the Nazi’s “Final Solution” in dealing with Jews was basically extermination. Many Germans influenced by the Nazi’s regarded Jews as a dangerous national threat; even the children were regarded to be threatening. Jews were killed relentlessly without sympathy, even to hire special killing squads to murder them along with other people that the Nazi’s opposed.
One of the people mentioned by former concentration camp prisoners was a person called “Mangelo.” He was a German doctor who performed scientific experiments in Birkenau on the bodies of the prisoners. He barely considered morality when doing his experiments, coaxing and taking children of whom many would die because of the experiments. One of the former camp prisoners shown in the video said that Mangelo, after performing an experiment on her, said “Too bad, she is too young; she has only two weeks left.” This carelessness with which a person can say about another’s death struck me. I had questions like, “Where was his moral and ethical mind? Was he ever conscientious?”
Moreover, a former prisoner said that prisoners used to work in crematories, which burned bodies of the dead. I wondered if the Nazi’s knew about the disgust and horror that one would have felt seeing the burning bodies of his fellow prisoners. I thought that one would only worry about the day when one would be killed and burned like one of the burning bodies. Furthermore, since prisoners so often saw fellow prisoners die so instantly and hopelessly because of the atrocities of the S.S. guards, they were used to seeing people die. I have never seen a person actually die in front of me, and I was doubtful if I can see people die everyday, yet the prisoners saw death everyday. The physical and mental harm the Nazis did to the Jews and other concentration camp prisoners was overwhelming to me, and I thanked God that none of it actually happens today in most places of the world.