Haven’t They Been Through Enough Already?
October 26, 2009
The last few weeks my english class has been reading literature about the Holocaust. So far, we’ve watched documentaries and read the graphic novel, Maus. Now we are reading Survival in Auschwitz a memoir by Holocaust survivor, Primo Levi. In his book, Levi re- lives the gruesome details of his time within the concentration camp.
After reading parts of this book, I can’t believe how strong Primo Levi, and the other prisoners of the camps had to be. They were beaten, deprived of food, and trapped in the most disgusting living situation imaginable. There is no possible way I would have been able to live through that, and most people did not. Levi writes,
“We Italians had decided to meet every Sunday evening in a corner of the Lager, but we stopped it at once because it was too sad to count our numbers and find fewer each time, and to see each other even more deformed and more squalid” (24).
Years later the few who survived the holocaust moved on as best they could. They healed, they grew older, and they had families. Some have passed on and some are still alive, still trying to forget the past and live in the present. But now, 64 years after Primo Levi and other Auschwitz survivors were freed, they have another problem to face.
I came across an article today in the New York Times. The article was about Israeli Jews who survived the Holocaust having a higher risk for cancer.
“But the researchers found that Jews who spent World War Two in Europe were at least 17 percent more likely to develop cancer than those who left before or during the war.
The results are important, the researchers said, because many Jews who survived World War Two in Europe were also victims of the Holocaust — the systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of about 6 million Jews by Germany’s Nazi regime and its collaborators”.
It’s devastating for anyone to be diagnosed with this disease, but it seems so unfair that the people who have already suffered through something as horrific as the Holocaust are not done suffering. Haven’t they been through enough already?
Laura's Blog on War & Peace 
October 29, 2009 at 1:33 am
Laura, I agree it dose seem unfair that a certain group of people have been forced to suffer first with the Holocaust and then to survive that only to die from cancer. I think it takes a real special kind of person to be able to withstand the inhuman physical and mental treatment shown to the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis. I also thought it was incredibly sad when Primo Levi writes about the groups of Italians meeting in Auschwitz and then when they were not able to meet because it was to hard to see how many of them had died between visits. To see someone survive all of that and then to die of something as horrible as cancer seems to me like some kind of sick joke. Your blog also got me thinking. What is it about being in concentration camps, or just being in Europe during World War II that makes someone more likely to develop cancer? I just can’t make the connection. I’m glad you chose this subject for this blog entry. I think more often than not the life that Holocaust survivors live after the war is forgotten because of how tough the Holocaust was on them. But it’s not like after the war life for the Jewish people became a bed a roses.
October 29, 2009 at 2:35 am
Up until now I had never thought that the direct effects of the holocaust could be felt, I know that the events and dreams still haunt the survivors, but the idea that it can still physically harm them just adds to the horror it of the whole period of histroy. This is completely horrible to hear, but I must admit that it isn’t overall that shocking, any events that causes such physical damage has to leave some sort of longterm damage. I dont mean to sound cold hearted, but the deseases that they were subjected to, the conditions that they endured, there had to be other lasting effects that could not be seen at the time of liberation. It has been seen that events early in the life of organisms have thier effects exponentially magnified over the life of that individual. Other diseases lead to further diseases later in life, such as first having chicken pox and then sometimes later leading to schingles. Although, maybe this can eventually lead to some positive outcomes, if it can be determined what types of cancer the survivors are coming down with, and about what age, then maybe steps can be taken to prevent and cure the cancer that occurs within their bodies.
October 30, 2009 at 9:48 am
Wow. I was unaware of this correlation between time spent in a concentration camp and a higher risk for cancer, and my reaction is one of complete shock. It’s tragic that the survivors of the Holocaust would still have to deal with repercussions from their time spent in oppression, especially beyond the psychological and emotional issues that ensue naturally from such a traumatic experience. As we discussed in class, it seemed to be a mix of luck and skill that allowed someone to survive to see the liberation of the camps, although the former played a much more prominent role in the matter of life and death, but for those who survived, the life they made after the war has not been easy, riddled with things like post traumatic stress disorder, physical impairments from injuries in the camp, those who refute the Holocaust, and living with the memories of thousands lost. It seems to just add insult to injury that their time in the concentration camps also raises the risk of them contracting an incurable disease.
November 2, 2009 at 2:12 am
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November 24, 2009 at 3:42 am
I too believe that if I were thrown into a situation such as the Holocaust I would not survive. All throughout the book it is common that for a person to survive the Lager he or she had to sacrifice their morals and take an active part in their own survival. There is no way to tell how you would do in such a situation because there would have been no precedence in your life to this event, nothing to compare to. The easiest estimate of your ability to survive is statistics; the percentage of people that died compared to those that lived would lead you to believe that death would be the likely outcome. It would be naïve to imagine yourself able to withstand the death camps because luck also played a big part in ones survival.
The chapter entitled The Story of Ten Days I found to be the best of the book. It was the chapter about Primo Levi’s survival during the last 10 days at the Lager, after the Germans had retreated. It is the best example of one having to fight for their own survival to survive the Holocaust and shows a glimmer of humanity still in these men that had been treated as animals for so long. The residents of the infirmary stuck together, provided for one another, and kept each other alive for what seemed to be their worst days in the camp. In the whole ten days, only one resident died, but it seemed that he was so far gone that he was beyond saving.
November 24, 2009 at 3:46 am
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