5/2/2018

Mr. Gill

US History (C)

Holocaust

        My name is Ekkehard Albert and I am a Jew from eastern europe. I live in a heavy populated area where most of the Jews were from at the time. I lived in an a shtetls, a Jewish town or village, with a lot of people. By living here I grew up learning the traditions of other local Jews by learning things such as their own language yiddish. This language combined the ideas of German and Hebrew. I was forced to learn strictly from yiddish books and watch or attend yiddish styled plays. I was turning the age of 13 in july of 1930 when the Germans rushed into our home and pulled us out. My family was transported to a local camp the next day and already saw the suffering of the others already here. My mom came to me and told me that she will never see me again and I should just take care of my brother. My mom then disappeared and I looked over my shoulder for my brother and he vanished as well. Later that day I was taken to my camp and saw again how filthy the camps were. They then told us to go to the showers and there I was lucky to find water running out unlike other camps where gas came out of here and kill them. Two years later in 1939 I was drafted for forced labor. I was sent over to Poland to work and here I was forced to work excessively and I was doing filthy work with an empty stomach. Not only were the conditions of the working bad but the fact that I was working with no food for over three days almost killed me. This was the lowest part of my life here and then things started turning around for me. Four months later I was selected to be free. I moved to Poland and starting living a lot better. I was not tortured, beat, or starved on purpose. I was now living a lot better until an outbreak of a rumor that a Jewish man murdered a Polish citizen. This brought great outbreak as I was now scared for my life. I hide for over two months trying to wait for the right time to flee. I was thinking where to flee and the idea of fleeing to Czechoslovakia kept coming to my mind. Therefore I made the choice to flee here, I got on a train and was disguised as a Polish worker going to Russia and It worked. I arrived in Czechoslovakia and moved into an apartment with a roommate that would offer to help pay for me while I recover. My roommate was my mother. I was reunited with my mother and nothing other than tears of joy came running down my face.

Mr. Gill

Honors US History, Period G

2 May 2018

My Personal Story

My name is Gabe Bowman. I am a 17 year old Jew that lived in Warsaw, Poland before the war broke out. One night, I remember hearing screams and seeing an orange light in the distance. The Germans had just invaded my home country, and they were burning the whole city, building by building. I then remember being given a yellow patch that resembled the star of David, and being dragged into a truck to be taken somewhere I did not know, but I was sure that it was not good. 

As we approached the location, there was a smell that made me want to vomit immediately. It was the smell of dead corpses, piled into ditches. I was at the Auschwitz concentration camp. As soon as we stopped, the soldiers started taking us out of the trucks to be led into a building. They took our clothes and shoes from us. A doctor examined each person, and divided them into healthy and not healthy people. The ones who were not healthy were led into a room to take a shower, but I never saw them every again. I was with the healthy group, and we were taken to a barracks which was very cramped, but had bunks in it to sleep.

The next day we were taken outside to work. It was the most grueling labor that I have ever experienced. We were forced by soldiers to clean up rubble and dig tunnels for the Germans. Later during my time there, I saw a man being dragged into a room, where I heard nothing but screams. Someone said that the doctors were doing tests on people, which were usually fatal. I eventually became so weak that I could not hold a shovel. A long time later, the Soviet Army attacked the camp and liberated the remaining prisoners that survived the horrors of Auschwitz. They gave us food and water, and cared for us until we had to move onto our own paths. I struggled to find work, so I choose to go back to school. I did not have any of my papers from my latest years at school, so I started a new life to get my education back up and running again.

H US History

Mr. Gill

3 May 2018

Life in Camps

    The date was November 9, 1938, it was like any other day in my life. My family was sitting down for dinner. All of the sudden the sound of gunshots erupted as the windows from all around the house shattered. It all happened so fast I saw my little brother on the floor crying with my mother holding him close. I then felt my father cover me with his body to try and keep me safe. All the sudden the door busted open and we saw about six men run in dark uniforms with guns pointed right at us. They were all screaming at us to put our hands in the air, we did so and they handcuffed all four of us.Then they carried us out to the bus, my little brother was crying still as we walked out of the house. What I saw when we stepped out was horrifying, buildings all up and down the street engulfed in flames, I heard people screaming and gunshots all around me. They threw us all into a big truck on the road, there were at least twenty other people in that truck, it started to drive off and I had no idea where it was going.

    I was still processing all that happened the next morning when the truck reached its destination. Then the doors on the back of the truck opened and the first thing that I smelled was the stench of burning flesh, then came the sound of people screaming. More of those men in the dark uniforms then came onto the truck and forced us off. When I stepped off the truck I saw all the bodies on the ground, there had to be hundreds of them from what I saw, there was blood everywhere, the air was thick and filled with smoke. Immediately one of the men in the dark uniforms grabbed my brother and my brother started to scream. My dad tried to get my brother back but the man hit my dad with the bottom of his rifle which instantly knocked my father out. That was the last time I ever saw my little brother

Life here was hard, everyday we had to work tirelessly with little sleep, if we didn’t comply they would kill us in cruel ways. Getting shot was almost a best case scenario, others were burned alive or put in gas chambers. No one ever took showers as you would never know if the shower would have water or deadly gas. And all this just because I’m a Jew?

Mr. Gill

Period G, U.S History

2 May 2018

First Person Account

    My name is Cole Simon, and I’m a young 13 year old boy from Praga, Poland. It is November 9, 1983 and I’m laying down in my bed trying to get some rest. All of a sudden my father rushes into my room to warn me of the Germans. “Father what is the problem?” I say. He says nothing and hectically grabs any clothes in his vicinity and throws them into a bag. He then says “We must leave immediately.” I’m frightened by his sense of fear in his voice. He rushes me and my mother out of the back door into our backyard. I can hear the screams of women and men down the street. A bright light reflects throughout the crevices of the night, it seems to me to be fire. We reached the end of my yard and made a sharp right to get out of the neighborhood. We reached the street crossing and saw German guards torching homes and churches, we turned around and two of them were standing right there. They took my mother from me, I remember her arm stretching out for me as she screamed “No, No!” It was just me and my father now, and that morning we were transported to a sort of camp in Lodz, Poland. The stench made me imagine a dumpster. We were placed in a camp surrounded by barbed wire and fence. German guards were prevalent throughout the camp. Now me and my father just waited. Four days had gone by and all I had eaten was a loaf of bread. I was beginning to starve, so my father came up with a plan. Every afternoon the guards would rotate, so my father created a distraction to free me from the camp. I ran as fast as I could, I didn’t look back. The last thing I said to my father was “I love you.” I ran until I reached a small town called Baluty. There a family took me in and cleaned me up. I never saw my mother or father again. 

May 2 2018

US History

Mr. Gill

    

    I was living in the largest ghetto which is in Warsaw Poland which is the capital. The trolley line ran through the middle of the city and were guarded by soldiers so if you tried to escape they would catch. My uncle learned the hard way he tried to run away a soldier caught him and beat him to death. Living in the ghetto was hard not knowing what me and my family were going to eat just imagining and thinking about food constantly. I lived in a two bedroom apartment with 5 other families living there and we were overcrowded. Constantly thinking when or if I was ever going to make it through this horrible time in my life. Waking up everyday not knowing was I going to be sent to camp and put to my miserable death. 

      One morning I woke up to hear Knocking on my door Lets Go! Lets Go! As a German soldier rushed me and my family on a train. Scared out of my mind not knowing where this train is taking us. I thought we are just being moved to another area, but once he shut that door and i heard him lock it I think we all realized where we were headed next. Imagine in a room with no windows, toilet or food knowing that where you're going was about to be like hell. We were headed to AUSCHWITZ camp.

US History, Period C

May 29, 2018 

         My name is Azriel Baruch and I am a survivor of the Holocaust. I am a 17 year old, Jewish upcoming writer who wants to tell his story. If I were to describe the Holocaust with one word, I would call it demonic. This was truly the work of Satin. 

          It all started when we arrived at Auschwitz. I was forced to put on a color coded outfit and was then separated from my family. I was selected to work labor while my family was sent to immediate death. This was the toughest moment. Seeing my family being carried away from me to be put in gas chambers took a toll on me. It was something that would change the way I view life forever. 

          It felt like I was never going to get out. I looked around everyday seeing people trying to escape and dying in the suicidal act. I saw no chance of escaping so I waited. Finally, the Nazis got word that the Soviet Union was on its way to Auschwitz. Therefor the Germans had us march towards Wodzislaw. It felt like every other step a body fell down with it. I was stepping over prisoners wanting to help but would be killed in an instant if did. Suddenly, A body falls and some Jews won’t leave the corpse. The Germans take action and get involved. I see my time to run for it and do so. I sprint for the treeline and hide in the shrubs. I wait for night fall and go westward towards the Allie lines. I reach it and I am saved. They send me back home to my normal life, but nothing will be normal again.

Prisoners of War, The survivors, death marches

Mr. Gill

U.S. History

5-2-18

                                                       The Holocaust

        During WWII many Jews were killed and mistreated in Germany we had to escape the country to faraway lands or else we would have to face death. I was just eighteen when this occurred in Poland we had been accused of being the culprits of the fall of Germany and that it was our fault just because we were Jewish. They came into my father’s store and destroyed all of his products and took him away along with my mother I was hiding in a closet and was scared to death but my father had told me that this might happen and to hide and find my uncle that he would take care of me and not to worry about him that he would be back with me. I ran to my uncle’s house and found him and I had told him all that had happened he told me that we were going to leave the city during the night with other families through an underground system I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time.

        All I could think was about leaving my friends, school, and family behind it was around ten o’clock when we were leaving his house and then we heard the barks of dogs and men in strange uniforms yelling and then I heard gun shots and people screaming my uncle told me to run we ran with a group of people and a guide that spoke broken polish but had a strange accent. One of the soldiers caught up to us but my uncle fought him off and told us to go on without him I couldn’t do that but someone pulled me away and that was the last that I saw of him and my entire family. I was scared I had walked a long time hiding in the shadows of the woods when we reached a farm and were told to hide in the barn there we were taken into a hidden room covered with hay and told to rest for the night and gave us food and water. They told us that we would be safe and that the following night we would be taken to another location I didn’t understand why we were fleeing our country like we were criminals all of this was because we were Jews and then after many long night walks we had finally made it to Spain were we would be given education and made new friends but I still hoped that my family could’ve been there with me. It was not long before I was taken to the U.S. where I would finish my studies and become a doctor but I would never forget my origins and that day when everything that I valued was taken away from me.

 

From my readings

Einsatzgruppen (Mobile Killing Units)

Killing Centers; An Overview

Rescue

Mr. Gill

US History

5-2-18

Personal Narrative

 My name is Kyle Hendricks and I am a Jew from Eastern Europe, specifically Poland. I lived a small and confined life since I was the minority in the majority of a vastly growing population. Me and my people spoke our own language called yiddish. When I was younger I had no education and started working for my father’s farm. As I got older and my Mom and Dad passed away, I continued to work on our families farm. When I was growing up my Mom and Dad worked very hard for their money and it wasn’t easy to come by, right now I’m facing a little of trouble making money. During the 1930s was a rough time for me as Hitler and the Nazis gained power which would change my life forever. A couple of days later violence erupts in a nearby city by killing 3 Jews dead and injuring over 200. I knew at that moment my fellow Jewish friends and I were in for violent attack on our society.  Luckily, I was one of the few to make it out alive from the brutal behaviors performed by the Nazis. A couple days later me and some of my friends were sent to nearby ghettos and concentration camps. At this point, I thought my life was over and I would never be free again. While, I served my time in the ghetto camp I lived a miserable and unbearable  life. In the ghettos we had no food or drink and we were confined into a small little area. Later on, many of us were massacred or died of starvation from the lack of resources that the Nazi officers gave to us. Many of us were forced to beg and or steal food that we tried to smuggle for the harsh winter months. This was a horrendous experience for me and my Jewish family to go through.

Topics:

Ghettos in Poland

Life in the Ghettos

Jewish Life in Europe before the war

5/2/18

Mr. Gill A period.

I was 18 years old when camps were starting to form. I lived with my two brothers and my mom, my father passed away in war. At the time we were living in the Jewish Quarter of Paris. My brothers and I worked as factory hands.  In 1933 my life changed in a drastic manor. Adolf Hitler was appointed the chancellor of Germany. 

In the first months of his chancellorship, Hitler began a concerted policy of "synchronization," forcing organizations, political parties, and state governments into line with Nazi goals and placing them under Nazi leadership. His main goal was basically to unite all German speaking people and to make Germany a world power. He completely despised of anyone who wasn’t like him. Hitler became so powerful he overthrew the government.  Hitler was close to completing his goals but he had to first complete his “Final Solution”,  the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people. The Nazis established ghettos in occupied Poland. Polish and western European Jews were deported to these ghettos. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) began killing entire Jewish communities.

My family and I suffered from his new plan to get rid of all of us Jewish people. Extermination and concentration camps caused my life to take a bad turn. My family and I were taken to a concentration camp called Auschwitz, where a little over a million people of my jewish community were killed. If it wasn’t for those Americans my family and I would have never survived. As I grew older I told my story for years and years to come.

Mr. Gill

3 May, 2018

When I was young and lived in Germany, right around the mid 1930s is when everything started to go terribly bad.  It all began when Hitler came to power started enforcing his racial purification.  His group that he called the “Nazi Party” began to go around to everyone and check if they had the right eye color, hair color, and if they were tall.  He liked to call this the “Aryan” race.  In order to be an Aryan, you had to have blue eyes, blonde hair, and be tall.  If you didn't have those and were  Jewish or Gypsy, you would most likely be humiliated.  Soon the nazis began collecting Jews and taking them to camps to be killed.  My family had to go into hiding for a long time.  We had to move every now and then because the nazis searched almost every house, shed, and basement.  We found many other families in hiding on our journey to escape the killing.  We even witnessed others getting shot by the killing squads of Nazis that would come through and kill as many Jews as they could find, but luckily we survived.  We traveled and traveled to new spots each week, struggling to find food and drink, hoping that one day this would all end and we could go home safely.  

One day, we heard the soldiers knocking at the door to our house but without hesitation they burst through the door and began looking throughout the house for us.  They eventually found us hiding in the attic and gathered us up to take to the camps.  We were treated terrible as we were thrown onto a train that made its way to one of the concentration camps in Germany.   My parents ended up cutting a hole in the floor of the train and after saying goodbye to me and my brother they dropped us through it.  The train went over our heads and eventually passed over.  Me and my brother from then on, were on our own and we had to escape Germany.  For years, we traveled on foot through the country but we eventually escaped and became free from the terrible acts of the Nazis.

1. The Survivors 

2. The Killing Centers 
3. The Nazi Terror Begins 
       I am a 17 year old Jewish boy. I work as a farmer in Eastern Europe. I was living in Poland at the time. There were a lot of other Jewish people living around me. When Adolf Hitler wanted to make Germany into a dictatorship with only one party, the racism towards jewish people began. we all became victims and our lives were forever changed. They kicked us out of our house and got rid of everything we owned. The Nazis made us move to these concentration camps. In these camps they would separate us into people who were good for forced labor and those who were not. They also separated the men with the women and children. I lost all of my family and everyday I would think about them and if I would ever see them again. I would make some friends in these camps whenever I had the chance to but for some reason every time they had to go to the showers they would never come back. Luckily I never had to go to the showers. When the war was over and I was freed I had absolutely nothing. No food, money, family, or a home. I set out to search for my family and went back to Poland where I lived. When I got home there was nothing there. I decided to live in a ghetto and started my life from scratch there. Every day since then, I would get nightmares about the camps and the Nazis as if I were reliving the moment. I couldn’t do anything normal like going out for a walk because I would be afraid of Nazis hiding in the shadows. The barks of dogs would haunt me because I thought they were German Shepherds. Those dogs terrify me now. It has been pretty calm these recent years but days like today will definitely give me nightmares and bring back these awful memories.

            I was deported to a ghetto in Czortków, in Czortków I went through many harsh nights where other grown men would take my rations as my I was weaker than all of them. Even though I’m still alive today I still have that terrified boy in me. I randomly throw up once a week from anxiety.

Mr. Gill

US History

2 May 2018

Holocaust Story

I was born in Munich, Germany in 1928. Up until my families forced deportation to one of the many Nazi camps, I lived a normal life in Germany where I had been finishing up school preparing to go to work with my father as a banker. When the deportations first started, we really didn't know exactly what as in store or us in the future. We were told we would be heading to work camps for the time being to aid with labor, but we soon learned the reality of the situation. In December of 1944, me, my father, and my mother were transported to a work camp in Langenstein, Germany. Although times had been rough before this, we had no clue we were entering something even worse.

As the trains arrived to the camp, the box car doors opened and we were greeted by Nazi SS soldiers who ran these camps. My family and I stepped off of the train and shuffled into the large line that had slowly been forming. As we approached the front of the line, we saw that people were being split up but we don't know why. My father speculated that the women and children were possibly being spared of labor and that only men would work. The line slowly advanced, and people began to be split into groups. Some went to the left and some continued forward. Fortunately, as I later found out what it meant to go left, my family all continued forward. We worked for months doing brutal hard work with barely any food and medical attention. There were many points where we just considered giving up but gladly we did not. On an early April morning in 1945 we heard the sounds of gunfire and found it to be American forces freeing us from the death camp. After this I did something I never dreamed of doing, I went home with my family.

Mr. Gill

U.S. History Period A

02 May 2018

My Survival Story

My name is Akiva.  I was 19 years old when I was imprisoned.  My father was imprisoned with me along with my younger brother, who was seven at the time.  I had been  held in a ghetto for about a month before they had to transfer us to another camp.  The Germans started pulling people out of their homes and dragging them onto the train cars.  The ones that resisted were either shot or beaten severely.  I was one of the last few people to be put onto the car, so I was right by the door.  My father and brother were not on the same car as me and I feared the worse for them both.  I had heard stories of people moving the bars and getting out of the train cars before they reached the next camp.  I knew that if I could move the bars, I could also escape.  There was only one problem; every few thousand feet, a guard would stand and watch the train to make sure no one was escaping.  My escape would have to be a very quick and stealthy one. 

About an hour outside of Berlin, Isaw my chance.  A bar on the door had been shaken loose by the constant movement of the train and the poor conditions of the car.  Myself and the man standing next to me started to pull at the bar with all of our strength.  After some failed attempts, we finally broke the bar loose and had an opening just big enough to fit through.  We waited until we passed the guard to make our move.  We slithered through the small hole and jumped off of the train. I knew that if I didn’t land just right, I could hurt myself or knock myself out.  Luckily, Iwas able to land safely with only some minor bruising to my arms and legs.  I, then, saw the man who helped me jump from the train a few dozen feet away.  I rushed to him to make sure that he was still alive.  He staggered to his feet and we made our way to the nearest town.  

When we arrived in the town, we found the nearest chapel and priest and made our peace with him.  He gave us a place to stay for the night, but warned us about how we couldn’t be spotted.  He warned us of the early morning patrol visits, how we couldn’t have fires to keep us warm, and how we had to stay away from windows at all costs.  The priest gave us some new clothes and very little food.  The food was no 5-star meal, but to us it was a feast compared to the few bites of food we had over the past few days.  The next morning, we were woken early by hard knocks at the door.  The patrol officer had come early.  While we scattered to collect our things, the priest continued to buy us some time.  We were able to sneak out of the back door and hide in the forest until we were sure that the guard left.  After we were sure that the guard had left, we made our way back into the house to collect the rest of our things so that we could be on our way.  

Mr. Gill

Honors U.S history, Period G

3 May 2018

The Holocaust 

            Back when I was a young Jewish boy before the Holocaust I had a great young life. I had my parents my brother and the rest of all of my family. We would go to school and my parents would go to work and making a good living to support our family. However, all of that soon changes for all of my family and all of my Jewish family. Once Hitler came into power and began his rule in Germany everything began to turn into the wrong direction. After his time in power began he became to believe that the German Nazis were the superior race to all and that all others shall not have the right to live. For the people that were persecuted, us Jews were persecuted the most out of all. We realized what would be happening and wanted to avoid all that was possible. Especially we wanted to avoid concentration camps, the death march, and other places such as Auschwitz. We looked at our options and decided that the best option for us was to go into hiding. We hid by digging a large whole in the middle of the woods and coving it with a blanket and placing leaves over the blanket. We sat in silence and tried to never speak a word to remain hidden. The only times that we would leave our small whole was in the snow or the rain and would move far away to avoid the possibility of everyone getting caught if one was caught. We did what we had to do to stay together and even though it was a living hell I made it through but sadly not everyone in my family made it.

Mr.Gill

US History

2 May 2018

                        The Camps 

    My name is Alejandro Hernandez and I will be telling you a story of how I survived the camps. When I was in the camps, I was the few of many to survive. Many of them have told their stories but today I will be telling mines.The camps were very brutal, they forced us to work, they barely fed us, I didn’t drink water for 2 days. I was a young boy when the Nazis captured my family and I when we were having dinner. They separated my family and they sent me to Auschwitz in Poland, it became the central of Germany, it became a huge network of forced labor camps.

The Nazis made us march a very long distance in the bitter cold, when we marched, they didn’t fed us, we didn’t drink water and its was in the middle of winter, so it was very cold. We were hungry, thirsty, and cold, it was very brutal for them to do that. At the marches I started to talk to some others there, we all had a similar story. They captured their families and separated them, one of them said that his dad was with him, in the same camp, until they separated them and he never saw his father again. I remember, when we were in the marches the number one rule for the nazis was to keep up or you’ll be shot to death. I tried my hardest to keep up but it was very hard, especially when you were starving, thirsty and cold. I am very lucky to be talking to the reader right now because the Nazis were very brutal towards us, honestly when I was there I didn’t know if I was going to make it to the next day.       

Topics :