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Walking in Their Shoes

The Holocaust Revisited

The Jews of the Holocaust faced many hardships. They lost their friends, family, and even their identity. Many of them lost their lives in Hitler’s "Final Solution". Walk in their shoes and discover what it meant to be a Jew during the Holocaust.

The year was 1940. A train slowed to a halt at a Nazi station. Nazi guards waiting outside opened the boxcar doors and began pulling out Jews. The Jews were sick, dehydrated, and hungry. Some had gone crazy. Others were too weak to stand. By threatening and beating them, the Nazi guards forced the Jews to walk to Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp. Little did the Jews know they were about to become part of one of the most gruesome killing sprees ever known.

After the arrival at the camp, the Jews were called out by name. They were escorted to a physician, who analyzed them and took notes. The notes would be used by the Nazis to determine what came next for the unsuspecting Jews--life or the

to the place where they will stay for tthe gas chambers. The Jews were then taken

to the place where they will stay for their remaining time in the concentration camps.

Every morning, the Jews would wake up to the call of a Nazi. They would not have a breakfast and get minimal sleep, but the Nazis would not care. The Jews would be forced to labor under harsh conditions and punishments with no breaks. Noncompliance, slow working, or showing even the slightest amount of defiance resulted in many Jews getting beaten and killed, yet the trains kept coming.

After a while, the Nazis began to believe the Jews in concentration camps were using too much food. Even the minimal two ounces per Jew was costly,

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By C. Mulligan