1) SHOCK: "Delusion of reprieve": "The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last moment. We, too, clung to the shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad." (p. 14)
"An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior." (p. 30)
"Disgust, horror and pity" were "emotions" one could "not really feel anymore. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such common place sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him anymore." (p. 33) “Beatings occurred on the slightest provocation, sometimes for no reason at all. For example, bread was rationed out at our work site and we had to line up for it. Once, the man behind me stood off a little to one side and that lack of symmetry displeased the SS guard. I did not know what was going on in the line behind me, nor in the mind of the SS guard, but suddenly I received two sharp blows on my head. Only then did I spot the guard at my …show more content…
They saw many alarming , long stretches of several row of barbed wire fences; water towers; searchlights; and long columns of ragged human figures. None of the prisoners were prepared mentally for what they were going to be in. When they arrived to the camp, they saw how some of the prisoners looked healthy but, “little did we know then that they formed a specially chosen elite, who for years had been the receiving squad for new transports as they rolled into the station day after day” (page 24) . The prisoners soon realized that unless they became Capos, they would join the beaten inmates. The prisoners also had all of their possessions taken away from them, were stripped naked, and shaven for all body hair. Any prisoner caught trying to hide their possessions would be hung. Lastly, they were also stripped of their names, the Nazi’s had assigned them with numbers