Wow! This is riveting. I almost wish I would have waited to read it and not during such a hard time in my personal life. I read for an hour last night while I lay in bed and I cried a good 15 minutes of it. It is so depressing and uplifting at the same time. I could also say that maybe it is a good idea for me to read this book at this point in my life. It shows me that although my entire world is falling down around me, it could always be worse. I feel as if I have no reason to be as upset as I had been. Now on to the book.
I picked up where the author and the other inmates were working on a chain gang during the middle of winter. These men were forced to dig holes in the frozen ground. I would assume to bury bodies. They would dig from sun up to sun down making little progress in the frozen ground while the guards screamed at them. They were struck by the butt of the gun for being to slow. These men dug in the trenches and were forbidden to talk to each, but when the guards were not around they talked of what they would do once they were free. They watched everyone around them die off by either disease, starvation, beatings, or sent off to the gas chambers and they still had a small glimpse of hope that they would one day be free. All of this was upsetting, but what got to me the most was the way he spoke of his wife." Suddenly there was a silence and into the night a violin sang a desperately sad tango, an unusual tune not spoiled by frequent playing. The violin wept and part of me wept with it, for on that same day someone had a twenty-fourth birthday. That someone lay in another part of the Auschwitz camp, possibly only a few hundred or thousand yards away, and yet completely out of reach. That someone was my wife". This broke my heart. There was another passage where he speaks about being close to death while he lay in the sick hut for four days. He said his wife came to him and they talked about many things. He said he could smell and touch her. He really believes that she was there because he later found out that she had already died, while he was hoping to be reunited once they were liberated. He believes her spirit visited him during that time. I left off with the author working at Dachau. He was on a rest team taking care of ailing patients. He is in the process of trying to escape with a fellow inmate who used to be a surgeon. I am hoping to get more reading done this evening if I can get the rest of my homework and household chores done.
I read this book for 30 minutes while in the tub on Thursday, October 13, 2011.
I read this book for 60 minutes on Saturday, October 15, 2011.
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