11.+Liberation+of+the+Death+Camps

Name: Nesse Godin Birthday: August 12, 1933 Interests: reading and writing  Dear Diary,  It is now 75 years since the Americans had liberated me and my family from the horrible concentration camp in Germany that I had lived in for many years. To this day I can still remember the horrible treatment of the Jews and the day that many of us were saved from Buchenwald.  I was 12 years old when my parents rushed home one morning and told me to pack my things. I was terrified because every time I asked where we were going my parents would simply answer by saying, “a long vacation.” We met many other families who were coming on vacation with us, like my best friend Alice. Then, all of a sudden, there were men telling us to march. There were many frantic people. Two hours latter there were many people with “no coats, no gloves, no stockings… as we were taken through the villages and towns and roads of Poland and Germany” (Americans 1).  When I got to our “vacation spot”, my daddy was crying. I did not understand what this meant at the time but as I got older I understood what he meant. The women and children were separated from the men and everyone had to take an exam. If you passed, you moved on to the two doors at the end of the hallway. However, if you did not pass, you were escorted by guards to an unknown location and you were never seen again. Luckily, whole family had passed. We then were shown to where we were going to sleep for the night. The guard gave us uniforms and told us that in twenty minutes we had an appointment. I did not really understand what this meant until we were in a grey building with women and men in barbers chairs and they had a collection bin at the door so you could drop off all of your stuff that was on the not wanted in Buchenwald. I was then assigned a job that was supposed to be completed every day. “Working long hours at hard labor in all kinds of weather and under constant beatings by the guards, many prisoners died from exhaustion and exposure. With only a little food a day (usually a piece of bread and weak soup), many others died from malnutrition and starvation. Even those prisoners who managed to avoid starvation or death by exposure were still vulnerable to death at the hands of the guards” (Understanding 1). I also learned that there was no health care in concentration camps. When people would become sick, the people who ran the concentration camp would let the Jews die. My best friend Alice died because she cut up her foot and there was nothing to bandage it up with.  The happiest day of my life was on April 11, 1945, when U.S. forces liberated the concentration camp where I spent many years living. However before the Americans came, the Soviet troops visited us. The SS guards tried to destroy all evidence that this was a concentration camp. Unfortunately, they failed to work fast enough. When the Soviet Union came they found many people who were hungry and were not in very good shape.  When American forces did arrive, they “…liberated more than 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald. They also liberated Dora- Mittelbau, Flossenburg, Dachau, and Mauthausen” (Liberation 1). This was also the first day that I got to see my daddy after they split us up on the day of our arrival. However, I do wish that Alice was able to make it to see that day. Oh what a glorious day it was! While I was passing the gates of Buchenwald I heard one American say, “This is not a concentration camp, it is a gigantic murder plant” (Danzer 576).   __Works Cited__ “Americans Recall Liberation of Nazi Death Camps” __VOA News__. 26 January 2005. 20 October 2008 < http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-01/2005-01-26-voa48.cfm> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Danzer, Gerald, et al. The Americans. Evanston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">“Understanding the Treatment of Jews during World War II” __World War II for Dummies__ 20 October 2008 < <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/Understanding-the-Treatment-of-Jews-during-World-War-II.id-1236.html> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">“Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps” __United States Holocaust Memorial Museum__ 7 October 2008. 20 October 2008 <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php? lang=en$ModueId=10005131

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