MIRIAM FARKAS INGBER
The word Holocaust means a massive extermination of people in one period. We can see an Holocaust during the II World War, in which mainly jewish people were murdered by Nazis in the concentrations camps, such as the Auschwitz camp. The Nazis were a group of German people led by Adolf Hitler, who were seeking to “clean” Germany, Europe, and all the world. Nazis people invaded a great part of Europe. They had many concentrations camps all along Germany. What were exactly the concentrations camps? The website of the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum says that a concentration camp is a place in which there are many people living in not good conditions and all against basic human rights. People in the concentration camps were literally treated as animals, they had not so much space for all the people, they didn’t had enough food, it was not clean, they were punished, forced to work by Nazis.
Miriam Farkas Ingber is a survival of the Holocaust. Miriam was from a poor, Jewish family in Terava, Czechoslovakia. Miriam and her mother were reported and force to go to the Auschwitz camp. But after they were taken to the Stutthof camp. In both of them they had to live the hard life of jewish person in the concentration camp. They were punished by the Nazis, they were treated as animals, they didn’t had enough to eat, the had to work and they shared their space with other hundreds of jewish people in the concentration camp. Miriam and her mother were forced to go on a walk of death. A walk of death is “a journey that stretched hundreds of miles and lasted nearly three months. ” (The Second Generation Research). During it, the were abandoned in a barn with other people. In that barn was where Miriam's mother died. After she was rescued by the Soviet forces, she knew her future husband in the displaced persons camp. Miriam Farkas makes part of the big extension of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in where they narrate a special situation they had to live during the II World War. Miriam tells us about a horrible night she had to live, and in which she decided to commit a suicide attempt.
Miriam told us about the horrible night she had to live. She told about a girl that slept in the top of the bed she slept on. She said the girl could had and epilepsy, and that that she had had a seizure. The girl threw herself to the floor and started screaming. Miriam said all of them entered into panic, they thought all they had came to kill them.So, they started to scream an yell. The Gestapo entered and turn on the lights. She said that the Gestapo started shooting everyone. Also, Miriam said he started to punish them. They had to jump out, jump in of the window. Miriam said to her mother that she couldn’t handle that situation anymore. She said she was going to kill herself in the wires the next day. The next day, Miriam went near to the wires and tried to kill herself. But, she was seeing by the Gestapo. She said the Gestapo sent the SS to punish her. She said she had to sat down in a chair for them to kit her 25 times with the rubber thong (I suppose it is a fusta). These is the hard experience she narrates to us this Memorial Museum. (Words we must understand: epilepsy: “a neurological disorder marked by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions, associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain.”(), seizure: “a sudden attack of illness, especially a stroke or an epileptic fit.” (Google Definitions), Gestapo: “the German state secret police during the Nazi regime, organized in 1933 and notorious for its brutal methods and operations.” (Dictionary.com))
I choose to report this testimony because I thought the story of Miriam was interesting. I think it is interesting because it is a story that tells us how she felt during the II World War in the concentration camps. Also, I think the story is interesting because many of the people in the Holocaust must have felt the way Miriam felt, that they didn’t want to be in there, that they preferred to be dead. By listening to Miriam, I could learn a lot of things about life. The first one was to take the hard situations with a good disposition. I learned this because when Miriam decided to kill herself in the wire because of what had happened in the night, she got a harder punish than the one she already had received. Also, look at what happened later: she survived and now she is living with her husband in the United States. The second and last thing I learned was to appreciate the life I have, because seeing Miriam telling the hard life she had to live was very hard and made me reflex. I mean, Miriam had to life in a concentration camp with many other people, in bad conditions, with fear of the possibility of being killed at any moment, and being punished for everything and in a hard way. Meanwhile we have to live a life very easy compared to hers. All the reasons I have said before are the reasons I decided to retell this story.
Sources of information:
- "Definición De Holocausto — Definicion.de." Definición.de. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 June 2015.
- "Definición De Nazismo." Definición ABC. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 June 2015.
- "Los Campos De Concentración, 1933–1939." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, n.d. Web. 03 June 2015.
- "Oral History." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, n.d. Web. 03 June 2015.<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_oi.php?MediaId=1906>
- "EasyBib: The Free Automatic Bibliography Composer." EasyBib. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 June 2015.
- "Death March and Research of WWII B-24 POW Stalag Lufts of WW2."Death March and Research of WWII B-24 POW Stalag Lufts of WW2. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 June 2015.
