I can hardly breathe in these dusty old cement barracks. The light is so bad that I can barely read the math problems the Nazis have assigned us. Only a few more hours until I can quit and go back to Plaszow with the others. For now, I just have to keep working. They’re yelling again outside. Something must have gone wrong. I walk over to the window. Carefully, I look out over the edge, and what I see makes my heart stop: my brother, Friedrich, is being held by that short, mustachioed guard, while the SS commander beats him with a rubber club. My brain is about to explode. Without thinking, I jump out of the window, eight feet off of the ground. I run toward my brother and grab him, freeing him from the guard’s hold. I can only hope that …show more content…
they don’t shoot us both. Officer Fehringer hears the yelling and walks toward us. He pulls the commander away, stopping the beating. He whispers something to the commander, who calms down. I am relieved. Officer Fehringer turns to us and says, “We’ll deal with you later. For now, get back to the barracks.” We hurry. I ask Friedrich why the guard was beating him and he says he was caught stealing money. I know he is mad at me for interfering. Now both of us will surely be beaten and killed. *** It’s been seventeen hours and they still have not come for us. *** The soldiers order us out of the building and into a line. As we approach the gate to leave the barracks, one of them calls out 304591 and 304628, the serial numbers tattooed on our arms. My heart pounds like a jackhammer. I don’t even have time to say goodbye to my brothers Samuel and Felek. All I can see are their sad faces as we are taken away. *** Officer Fehringer takes us to the SS headquarters, where we wait. Friedrich and I swear to stick to our story - we did not steal any money - no matter how bad they beat us. Officer Fehringer, a club in his hand, escorts Friedrich inside a small, windowless room with cement walls. I hear the whack of the club as it hits and my brother’s muffled cries. It goes on and on. Every time I flinch. Finally the sounds of the beating stop. Officer Fehringer steps out of the room without my brother and orders me to enter. I am shaking so badly I can barely walk but I manage to shuffle in. I notice a tall, thin guard inside. His eyes are gray and sad. My brother is scrunched up in a corner, bleeding. I wonder if he is dead. He groans and I am relieved. The SS guard watches me while I look at my brother in shock. I barely hear the voice of Officer Fehringer when I feel the crack of his club against my head. I don’t try to move; I just stare at my brother. It feels like he is tapping me on the head with a soft pillow. I let myself fall, knowing that if I were to stay standing much longer his beating would kill me. Officer Fehringer tells me to get up. I stagger, scared he will continue to beat me. Instead he orders the SS guard to take us to the 2 foot by 1 foot stehbunkers until we confess. The guard locks us up in two different cells. We can’t see each other, but we can talk. When the guard leaves, Friedrich wails “Why did you do it? You couldn’t have helped me. Now they’ll kill us both!” I don’t have anything to say. I can’t think of anything to calm him down. All I can do is helplessly stand in my cell. *** We confirm our decision to stick to our story. *** We stand there for what seems like eternity. I can tell from his moaning that Friedrich’s wounds are bad. I just have a headache. *** My knees hurt and my tongue is so swollen from dehydration I can hardly breath. Now and then I fall into a kind of light sleep. Why don’t they just kill us? *** I barely see the SS guard return. My heart nearly jumps out of my chest. I whisper “Friedrich, Friedrich wake up!” My brother gasps and mumbles to himself. The guard continues to walk toward us and unlocks my cell, then my brother’s. I can barely walk, my my legs are so stiff. He pulls us out. The light from the sun is so bright it blinds me momentarily. I glance at my brother. His face is swollen and he has bruises all over his body. They are taking us back to the SS headquarters. “Here comes another beating,” I mutter. Officer Fehringer is waiting outside. When we get close he yells “Tell me where that money is or you’ll go back to the stehbunkers!” I stare at the ground. “I will have you hanged!” He takes us back to Plaszow. The next morning we are boarded onto a train. They tell us we are headed to a new camp. *** We are boarded onto a dusty old windowless train.
The train is so full of people that I can’t sit down. We hear the American jets above us. Some of us put our striped jackets on the train’s roof to signal to the American fighter jets that we are prisoners. They attack only the engines for a time. Every time an engine blows up the train stops and we wait hours until the replacement comes. *** New jets come. These ignore our jackets and strafe our car. My brother is shot in the leg. The train stops again. This time the long wooden door opens. A tall, skinny soldier yells at us to get out. Others violently drag out the wounded and the dead, my brother among them. Outside, it is cold and bright. I ask a general if I can stay with the wounded, explaining that I’m a doctor. I beg him, but he only laughs and pushes me onward. “The Americans will take care of them, there's nothing to worry about.” He forces me to abandon my brother. *** We start out on foot the next day because the Americans won’t stop shooting the trains. We march all day. That night we are locked in a cold and drafty barn. We have no blankets. We sleep on dusty piles of hay along the south wall. All we are given to eat is rotten bread and little water. During the night I turn in my sleep and scrape my arm on a rusty nail. I dream of the day before when my brother was shot by the Americans on the
train. We march again the next day. My elbow continues to hurt. At night we sleep in another barn. *** I wake up the morning of the third day and realize that I am feverish. My elbow is infected. Endless hours of marching and only my striped pajamas to wear in the February cold. I am ready to give up. Soldiers have begun shooting those of us too weak to continue. I try not to look up, not to see anyone murdered. We are starving. I am so weak and feverish I am starting to hallucinate. Often I see my younger sister Yanka marching with us, though I know she was taken away months ago. She stares at the ground, wearing our same striped pajamas. Her expression is empty. The fourth day we are awakened by the soldiers and told to form a column five people wide. I’m in the front when we start to march again. I notice a tank moving towards us. It is stamped with a white star - Americans! Or am I hallucinating? The Germans drop their muskets and start running. I know it is true. “Americans!” we yell. Some of us chase after the German soldiers, killing them with bare hands. I don’t have the guts. I just walk over to the tank and sit down against the cold shiny metal. A soldier leans out, pats me on the shoulder and gives me a pack of Lucky Strikes cigarettes. I begin to weep.
It’s hard for civilians to see what veterans had to face and still do even after all is said and done. The rhetorical strategies that contribute to Grady’s success in this article is appealing to the reader’s emotions through the story of Jason Poole. Denise Grady’s “Struggling Back From War’s Once Deadly Wounds” acts as an admonition for the American public and government to find a better way to assist troops to land on their feet post-war. Grady informs the reader on the recent problems risen through advancements in medical technology and how it affected the futures of all the troops sent into the Iraq war.
Bullets flying through the air right over me, my knees are shaking, and my feet are numb. I see familiar faces all around me dodging the explosives illuminating the air like lightning. Unfortunately, numerous familiar faces seem to disappear into the trenches. I try to run from the noise, but my mind keeps causing me to re-illustrate the painful memories left behind.
The first convoy of deported prisoners is kept standing in the middle of the hot c...
In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of personal responsibility as they struggle to cope.
The boys were called out to help shovel free a troop train trapped by snow-blocked tracks. The experience "brings the war home" for all of them, and they realized they would have to face a crucial decision very soon.
One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind. Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable. Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone. Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off. Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death. His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.” The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.
During World War II there was event that lead to deaths of millions of innocent people. This even is known as the holocaust, millions of innocent people were killed violently, there was mass murders, rapes and horrific tortures. The question I will attempt to answer in the course of this paper is if the holocaust was a unique event in history. In my opinion there were other mass murders that people committed justified by the feeling of being threatened. But I don 't believe that any were as horrific and inhumane as Germany’s genocide of the Jewish people.
Holocaust Facts The Holocaust has many reasons for it. Some peoples’ questions are never answered about the Holocaust, and some answers are. The Holocaust killed over 6 million Jews (Byers.p.10.) Over 1.5 million children (Byers, p. 10). They were all sent to concentration camps to do hard labor work.
The soldiers were not forced to walk the entire journey. At one point, they were stuffed into 1918 model railroad boxcars, which were 40 by 8 in size. There were over 100 men in each car. There was ...
“We are under attack!” Jimmy, our patrol man, yells leaping for the trench. A bullet pierces his skull before hits the ground leaving his body lifeless and bloody at my feet.
N.Cull’s assessment of the film Saving Private Ryan in that it portrays “a realistic depiction of the lives and deaths of G.I’s in the European theatre in World War II” is an accurate one. Director Stephen Spielberg brings to the audience the “sheer madness of war” and the “search for decency” within it. That search ends for a group of soldiers whose mission it is too save Private Ryan. Although the film shows horrific and realistic battle scenes along with historically correct settings and situations with weapons and injuries true to their time, the film’s portrayal of war goes a lot deeper than that. The expressions and feelings of soldiers along with their morals and ideology are depicted unifyingly with the horror of war. The lives and deaths of American soldiers in the immediate part of the invasion of Normandy are illustrated more realistically than ever before. Saving Private Ryan captures the “harsh reality of war as authentically as possible”.
One cold, snowy night in the Ghetto I was woke by a screeching cry. I got up and looked out the window and saw Nazis taking a Jewish family out from their home and onto a transport. I felt an overwhelming amount of fear for my family that we will most likely be taken next. I could not go back to bed because of a horrid feeling that I could not sleep with.
Grady, Denise. "Struggling Back from War’s Once-Deadly Wounds." Ed. Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. The Presence of Others: Voices and Images That Call for
The rest of the day I scanned the crowd of Indians as I switched position with other soldiers. When the cool blanket of night covered the sky, I had first watch. There wasn’t really a need for other soldiers to keep watch because all of the Indians by now were to frail and broken to run away. But I guess there was always a chance of a wolf or other kind other predator taking away a baby or dog or something. I kept watch most of the night until finally, someone came and relieved me from my duty. That night I had a strange dream, I was at home with my wife and we were cooking dinner together, then as I walked over to grab a plate from out of the pantry when I looked out the window and saw Onacona staring at me. It gave me chill and sure enough when I jolted up from dream, Onacona was staring at me with his hollow stare. I screamed a little bit but no one cared. I guess everyone was use to screaming of people by now. This went on for two days now. I would have a weird dream then wake up to Onacona. But I still looked for his parents. And when I was looking for his parents I reflected on why I was so quick to choose this job. Why I thought it would have been a good idea to leave my wife and try to help the Indians was beyond me because clearly we weren’t helping them enough. People would die every day on the trail, and even more will die at the reservation. But that night when everyone was setting up camp I
"Nancy. Shelly." Names being said one after another, it felt like a lot more names were said than twenty. As every name is called a slight bit of relief is released when I realize it is not mine. Everyone who was called walked to the solider and stopped directly behind him. The German solider pauses. I thought he was done calling names, but a break in the silence I hear my name, "Willimina Berg." My heart drops. My mother doesn't do anything. At this point I don't think my presence mattered to her anymore. So I walk to the solider without saying a word to my mother. I was the last name called and everyone else was sent to their rooms. We were given a few blankets to share and slept on the floor till the morning when we will begin our march for the search of the unknown. "Morning. The day is starting now. We will begin our march in an hour. Be ready to go at the gates in forty-five minutes" said the German Solider. Grabbing a blanket, and a slice of bread I exit the food haul. I'm the first to the gate. Through the fence I can see the women I used to share a room with working, but I do not see my