What did you learn from this story that you did not previously know about life in Nazi concentration camps?
I knew that the Nazi concentration camps were horrendous but imagining them leaving their kids so they could potentially live a little bit longer seems like a decision that would break a person. It really makes you question if the people that existed during this time, had an ability to completely detach themselves from the situation. Humanity wasn’t an option, you just acted and didn’t question it at all. On top of that, I knew that there were a lot of people involved in this but the idea of kids or babies that were stomped to death somehow makes a horrible situation, even worse. This was one of the times in history in which humanity fell apart. When enough people do the same thing, we convince herself it’s okay or it’s normal. Even reporters who study hate groups for an extended amount of time, struggle to not normalize these ideas that these groups preach as time goes on.
A tall, grey-haired woman who has just arrived on the “transport” whispers, “My poor boy,” to our narrator. What does she mean?
The gray-haired woman saying “my poor boy” is her way of sympathizing or at least attempting to understand the position that he’s in. She has lived long enough to understand when a person is a product of the environment. She doesn’t blame him for anything, she doesn’t see him as the center of all evil, she just sees him as a young boy taking orders. Any action that he has taken so far wasn’t his choice, and in a general sense I don’t think she blames most of the people that are there. She understands that this is how society works. Whether she likes it or not, the people that are in charge were doing the things they were doing because of the environment they were a part of. They were the product of the environment. Just this small moment showcased that she was one of the wisest people in the story, she blamed no one because everybody was doing the same thing.
“Are we good people?” asks our narrator. What is this exchange about? What do you think?
Right after asking this question, our narrator goes on to say that how he only feels anger for the Jews and nothing else. I think this was a way of him trying to solidify the significance of the actions he took instead of questioning it. This is because if you question it, he will feel completely out of place and wrong. There would be no way for him to explain this to himself, so he just only adds to the negativity. And in my opinion, I don’t think the majority of the people involved in this are good people or bad people, they were just weak people. They saw something happening and that they were happy that it wasn’t happening to them. They were able to diffuse the responsibility and just take orders. Nothing seemed entirely wrong because everybody was doing it. It’s easy to let society take control of you, just to follow the path, especially if you went against it it would mean putting your life on the line. This is why I think there were no good or bad people in this, they’re just people.
Abdulla, Thanks for these thoughtful responses. I appreciate your emphasis on the ways in which our actions are shaped by context and environment.