Monday, February 14, 2011

Chapter 5 (pages 66-84): "Do you trust me?"

Describe Elie's experiences in the hospital. Did they surprise you? Why or why not?

5 comments:

  1. Yes!! I was very surprised, how are you going to treat the jewish prisoners the way you do in the camps, and then when they are injured and do not help out germany at all, you treat them one-hundred times better? It makes no sense, they are actually using your resources and you treat them better. The only thing i can think of is they use it to mess with their heads. You are treated horrible, then nice, making you be even hit harder with the cruelity being projected in the camps. Another thing can maybe be the people in the hospital are not exactly exstatic about hitlers rule, so they want to rebel by helping the jews instead of putting them in more pain. So they give them back a little piece of the normal life.

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  2. I was really surprised by Elie's experience in the hospital. When his foot began to swell because of the cold, I feared that this may lead to Elie's death. Why would the Nazi's want weak people?, this would give them yet another thing to worry about, but no. In the hospital, the patients were treated very well. They were given good bread, a thicker soup. They were freed from the bell that ordered them around, from roll call, and they no longer had to work. Another thing was that the doctor was a Jewish doctor, did that have a factor in how well the patients were treated, I am not sure. Or, was it because they needed strong and healthy inmates to be able to work in the factories and in the fields. Whatever the reason, I was really surprised by how well the patients were treated in the hospital, and I think it was something Elie needed, to give him some hope that it would get better.

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  3. Yes, it really surprised me. I would think that in the hospital the doctors would make the death procedure faster. So it really surprised me how nice the doctors were, maybe because one of the doctors was a Jew. It also surprised me that in the hospital there were sheets on the bed. I would imagine that there wouldn’t be bed sheets so the prisoners wouldn’t get used to them. It really annoyed me because in the hospital everyone was nice and understood you, but out of the hospital the Nazis treated you like trash.

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  4. Elie’s experiences definitely surprised me. I was even surprised that there was a hospital in the camp for the prisoners. The way the Nazis hated the Jews (or any other prisoners) made me think that they would certainly detest injured or sick Jews. I thought that if a prisoner was sick, he would immediately be sent to a crematorium, but it was very surprising to know that there were hospitals for those prisoners. The hospital was probably the most humane place Elie had been to during his entire camp life. In the hospital, the prisoners got a better portion of food, they were free from work, free from the bell giving them orders, free from roll call, and free from the terror. The doctor was also a Jew, which made it even more surprising. Because the doctor was a Jew, the hospital seemed like an even better place. Probably for the Nazis, it would be “disgusting” to have an “Aryan” doctor touching the bodies of “nasty” prisoners. I think the purpose of the infirmaries was to find all the very weak people, and send them to the crematoriums, while the other sick people could be cured to be able to work for the Nazis again. Either way, the way Elie was treated in the hospital surprised me, but even the fact that there WAS a hospital for the prisoners surprised me even more.

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  5. Elie’s foot was swollen from the cold and he went to the infirmary. The doctor was Jewish and he told Elie that his foot had to be operated. When Elie got operated, I thought that his foot was going to be cut off or he wouldn’t be able to walk anymore. But luckily, the operation went very well, but Elie had to rest for some weeks. The prisoners in the infirmary were treated very well. Elie could eat good bread and a thicker soup. Elie could sleep in a bed with white sheets and have no work, no more roll calls, no bell and no more orders from the SS officers. It was very surprising how the prisoners in the infirmary were treated. Before I thought that the sick prisoners weren’t fed and treated badly because they were people that were going to die soon. But now I think that they were treated well because they wanted them to get healthier, and get more men to work.

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