Summary of The Testimony of Alfred Caro

Jonny Woods

Mr. Neuburger

ENG Comp 101-101

18 March 2013

The Account of Holocaust Survivor Alfred Caro

            Alfred Caro’s story starts well before WW2 in Berlin 1911, and he describes himself and his family as what we would consider today a very middle class kind of family. His father interestingly enough, served in the German army in WW1 well before the Nazi’s came into power. He was a decorated soldier, and because of this, Alfred’s family was a very patriotic group of people. Alfred mentions that there were often times that the German national anthem (or what constituted as one) was often sung in his house, along with other German songs.

After the War, Alfred’s father opened up a little butcher shop, and did very honest work, trying to make a living to support what we would consider a large family unit. Alfred had two brothers, and three sisters.

            As a young man, Alfred describes what young people did for recreation, hobbies, dancing, and chasing the girls. It was his plan during this time, that once he was old enough he would go and work with his father in the butcher store and continue the family business.

            When the war was approaching, Alfred describes an extreme change in how the Jews were being treated. So extreme, that they weren’t even allowed to sit in park benches, because it was against the law. He speaks of the Nazi’s going around and accusing law abiding Jew with all kinds of false allegations, so that they could arrest them and put them in the occupation camps. When the Nazi’s came looking for Alfred specifically, he hid from them for days until he was afraid of what would happen to him if he didn’t turn himself in, because he was afraid that if he didn’t they would take another member of the family in his stead.

            After being held at the police station in Berlin like he was a criminal, truck’s arrived to transport him and the other Jews that they had charge with trumped up allegations to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Life in the camp was a terrifying thing, with the Nazi’s killing people indiscriminately, beating them, and treating them less than you would treat animals going to the slaughter.

            Alfred explains how very lucky he was to have only been in the concentration camp for six to seven weeks when he was released. The reason for his release was the his mother contacted one of Alfred’s old friends when he was a child named Schmitt, who now worked for a branch of police that could investigate as to whether Alfred had been wrongly convicted. Alfred does not truly know whether this was the reason for his release from the concentration camp, but he strongly believes that it was the catalyst if not one of the major factors in association to his freedom. I think that since Alfred was only in the concentration camp a very small time that it was the major contributing point to his surviving the Holocaust. 
            I would attribute a consequence to Alfred's survival was perhaps a religious one, he states that he does believe in God, but he does not believe in the Orthodox Jewish faith. If things had happened differently, and the Holocaust never happened, I have to wonder if his viewpoint in this would be a different one.

           

            “I would say the goal in life was to grow up in a big town, and that you have every day like Hollywood. You want to grow up, and you want to have fun, and had to work, and make a little bit of money, and have a good time. Like all young people everywhere in the whole world. There are no different. But then, when the bad time came it changed, the separation changed completely (Caro, 1997).

            “God in heaven, life in the camp…  You had nothing. If you had your life, then you were lucky, when you were not lucky, you were dead. Maybe the people who are dead were luckier than the ones were alive (Caro, 1997).”