Memories of the Camp

The interviews that I took a look at was Max Feuer, and Samuel Isakovitch. The reason i chose these two men, is because they were at one time, in Buchenwald.

Starting off with Max Feuer, the way he experienced the Holocaust was very different from Samuel. In the beginning Max along with his brothers and mother, tried to emigrate to America, his brothers made it but he did not. He was sent to Sachsenhausen, and worked until he was not able to work anymore. There was one question in the interview that was interesting. "Suppose you were accusing the Nazi's before the American people. What do you say against them?" The response that Max gave was that he wouldn't talk about how horrible the Nazi's were to him or to the people of the camp, but what the Nazi's did to the men of the Nazi party. He didn't understand how these men can kill and not be phased by what they just did. 

Also another question that was raised was, Why didn't the prisoners wreck havoc outside of Buchenwald after being liberated? He states that they didn't want to inflict pain physically, but emotionally and psychologically, make them understand the shame of what they allowed to happen within the walls of these camps.

 Samuel Isakovitch was a survivor of 4 different camps, his occupation was a coal miner, Rubber factory worker, and stone quarry. He was strong and experienced a lot. He talked about being taking into the camps, and seeing the women and children being separated, and thrown into the fires and getting shot. If someone were to flee they were "Sabotaged". Also if a person was not working to their full potential or clumsy, they were sabotaged, which to them meant being hung. 

There was one question that stood out and that was, "What should be done with Germany now?" He answers by saying, "I can't say anything". The damage has already been done and there is nothing that can be done or said to fix it. 

The reason I picked these two survivors is because they both experienced something different, and had the same feelings of Germany and the SS. Both of them feel there is nothing that should be done to Germany to get even, one wants them to feel the shame of what they did and the other just doesn't know what to say. 

Being an outsider and a person who has only read about the Holocaust in history books, if I had experienced something like that, the pain from surviving and the pain of how a person feels when friends, who weren't jewish, wasn't there, how do you let that pain go? How do you let the pain of surviving and experiencing death leave you? Can a persons memory just completely erase once their testimony is on paper? Is there PTSD? So many questions and feelings that arise, you cannot answer them, because you have to experience it.