| This is the story of Sim Kessel and his plight in the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. He was in the French resistance but the bulk of the book takes place after his arrest by the NazisSim tells you his experience as they transported him to the camps where he was packed and left for days with corpses and people urinating and defecating on themselves. His time working the long stressful labor they had at the camps. His rations of soup that was almost water and his thankfullness to find a potato in it every once in a while. He battled disease from malnutrition, doing his best to sustain on 500 calories a day while working all day.
Three or four people would sleep on top of each other and wake up with corpses around them. He was beaten with rubber clubs and watched others being beaten to death. He also told the story of his botched hanging where the rope broke. He was then ordered to be shot in the back of the head. But he befriended a man by the name of Jacob, who was the former trainer of famed boxer Max Schmeling. Through this friendship Sim was able to get the identity of an already slain prisoner and Sim assumed this identity throughout the rest of his time there. | ||
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Plot & Themes Which institution - prison camp War/Cloak & Dagger story? - holocaust Life in an institution Yes War/Spying Yes Period of greatest activity? - 1900+ Subject of Biography Gender - Male Profession/status: Ethnicity - Jew Nationality - French Setting How much descriptions of surroundings? - 7 () Europe Yes European country: - Poland Century: - 1930's-1950's Writing Style Book makes you feel? - depressed How much dialogue in bio? - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog |
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