Remembering the horrors
Suddenly, the silence became more oppressive. An SS officer had come in and , with him, the smell of the Angel of Death. We stared at his fleshy lips. He harangued us from the center of the barrack:
" You are on a concentration camp. In Auschwitz..."
A pause. he was observing the effect his words had produced. his face remains in my memory to this day. A tall man in his thirties, crime written all over his forehead and his gaze. he looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life.
"Remember," he went on. "Remember, it always, let it be graven into your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here you must work. If you don't work you go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium. Work or the crematorium - the choice is yours."
From: NIGHT by Elie Wiesel
" You are on a concentration camp. In Auschwitz..."
A pause. he was observing the effect his words had produced. his face remains in my memory to this day. A tall man in his thirties, crime written all over his forehead and his gaze. he looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life.
"Remember," he went on. "Remember, it always, let it be graven into your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here you must work. If you don't work you go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium. Work or the crematorium - the choice is yours."
From: NIGHT by Elie Wiesel
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