Surviving Auschwitz And The Gulag

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Recommended: Living in concentration camps

Shannon Keegan
Doctor Brennan
History 121
April 5 2014

Surviving Auschwitz and the Gulag
Living in Europe during the 1930’s and 1940’s was very a difficult experience, especially if you were Jewish. In 1933, the Holocaust began when Adolf Hitler came to power in the country of Germany. An estimated 11 million people were killed during the holocaust, six million of those, innocent people, were Jewish. Allied Powers conquered Hitler and the Nazi power on May 8, 1945. Primo Levi was one of the men lucky enough to survive the holocaust. Levi was the author of his autobiography, Survival in Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz describes his ten-month journey as a young man surviving the horrible life while in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Janusz Bardach’s powerfully written novel, Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag, reflects on his extraordinary story and life changes while being a prisoner in Kolyma, of the soviet regime. While being a prisoner in these concentration camps, the men weren’t treated like normal human beings. For the two men and the rest of the prisoners, the only way they would survive is to adapt into a new and brutal lifestyle and behavior. The stories about their lives are really an eye opener about life and they remind us how we shouldn’t take for granted the beautiful life we have now.
Primo Levi was an Italian Jew and antifascist, who earned his degree in Chemistry from the University of Turin. Primo Levi was twenty-five years old when the Fascist Militia arrested him on December 13, 1943. His journey first began in Fossoli Dentention Camp, located near Modena. Levi and about six hundred and fifty other Italian Jews, spent several weeks as an inmate here. At the end of February,...

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...e very different. The one similarity that showed throughout both of their reflections was their ability to stay positive and their strength to survive. Both men found ways to keep their minds off of the horrible living conditions that they were put in. Levi would try and find the positive in every situation that was given to him, while Bardach would escape from all the madness through sleep.
Levi and Bardach’s story about their survival during the 20th century was truly an eye opener. No history textbook or class will be able to explain exactly how the holocaust truly was. To hear from two men who survived the camps explain the daily life of a prisoner at that time, really helped me understand that I am extremely lucky for all that I have. I could not imagine the pain they went through during and after the camps. They lost years of their lives and their families.

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