u The following is a transcript of a personal account of a concentration camp by a survivor, Alice Lok Cohana.Watch her interviewby going to ushmm.org and searching for: Alice – Lok – Cohana.
Several days later we arrived to Bergen-Belsen. And Bergen- Belsen was hell on earth. Nothing ever in literature could compare to anything what Bergen-Belsen was. When we arrived, the dead were not carried away any more, you stepped over them, you fell over them if you couldn’t walk. There were agonizing cries . . . people begging for water . . . They were crying, they were begging. It was . . . hell. Day and night. You couldn’t escape the crying, you couldn’t have escaped the praying, you couldn’t escape the [cries of] ‘Mercy’ . . . it was a chant, the chant of the dead. It was hell.
Looking at the evidence
1. Where was the concentration camp that Alice Lok Cohana arrived at? 2. Where were the dead lying? 3. What were the people who were alive doing? 4. What did Alice Lok Cohana think the camp was like? 5. Name the Nazi who was in charge of the concentration camps. 6. What was the purpose of these camps?
RECALL
1. What were ghettos? 2. Name two locations of extermination camps. 3. What was the purpose of extermination camps? 4. What is Zyklon-B? 5. Apart from the Jewish community, who else did the Nazis wish to kill? 6. What does Holocaust mean?
HISTORICAL EMPATHY
7. Conduct some research using the websites mentioned in the digital resources (mentorbooks.ie/resources) and try to imagine what it must have been like for a young person arriving into a concentration camp.