Jonny Woods
Mr. Neuburger
ENG Comp 101-101
15 March 2013
The
Account of Holocaust Survivor Ellis Lewin
Ellis Lewin’s story
starts right before the war breaks out in Lug Poland. He enjoyed the beginning of
a normal childhood at six years old, playing with siblings and cousins, getting
into trouble, and over all enjoying time with family and friends. Things
changed for the Jewish youth as the Nazi’s rose to power in Europe but it wasn’t
an overnight change, it was gradual, like a feeling of dread that is slow
moving but finally makes it way out of obscurity and seats itself firmly in
your heart and mind. Most of the elder Jews knew what was slowly coming their
way, and tried to shield the youth from hearing or having to deal with such a
terrible thing. It wasn’t an easy task, and sooner or later the young Jews
(like Mr. Lewin) learned what they were going to have to face for the soon
approaching foreseeable future.
Each day for Mr. Lewin
became progressively worse than the next until the Polish army was defeated in
1939. The change of how things were at the time was almost instantaneous. The
Nazi’s separated the Jews from the other inhabitants with the construction of
large fences on either side of the streets, segregating the Jewish community
into what we now know as “The Ghettos”. Mr. Lewin speaks of the Ghettos as a
favorable time under the Nazi rule as compared to the rest of his experience during
the Holocaust.
Mr. Lewin story
continues from the Lug Ghetto to being in the concentration camp in Auschwitz and
then to being liberated by the Americans. He survived by a simple rule, every
man for himself. The Jews were reduced to a very animalistic way of surviving,
and if you could steal food from someone else to feed yourself, you did just
that and moved on to the next day.
Mr. Lewin survived
almost the all of his family save a small few and the major consequence to his
survival, in my opinion, is a strong and deep rooted sense of the family structure
and an equally strong opinion that those who promoted and brought about pain
and suffering during the Holocaust should be brought to justice.
“When the Wars were approaching and the bombings we heard on a daily
basis, we would gather in each other homes and discuss, and when I say we, the eldest
did and as a child this was a very scary and a very dismal existence because
you were forming some very bad things in the mind and would virtually walk
around scared on a continual basis. In a way it was wonderful to do this but in
retrospect now as I look back, it is not good sometimes to have children under
conditions that when you discuss potential annihilation or potential destruction
of being annihilated on a mass basis, you sort of don’t know how to cope with
that and you are basically scared through that whole era time and existence. So
the gathering of a family as a unit was wonderful but the tails as we say
around the fireplace scared the hell out of me and my cousins and until the end
of the war we were just constantly living under that fear (Lewin, 1996).”
“Again, I go back to the point that the wonderful thing still about the
Ghetto, this thing has so many tentacles that it was wonderful at that particular
time is was wonderful because of this, and the next time it got worse, but it
was still good because of that, and the third time it was taken away from you
it was still wonderful because you were still able to play and do a little of
this and a little of that. Now, it was still wonderful, under all these
terrible conditions and under all these situations because I was still with my
mother and we were still a family unit. To a child that is the most wonderful,
protective, warm, indescribable feeling, to be with your parents. Under any
conditions, under virtually any conditions, I don’t care if you have to share a
rat’s tail for food, it is the love of you mother who hugs you, and nice words
and so on. So in a way, even under those microscopic conditions, it was still a
good condition, because I was still with my family (Lewin, 1996).”
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