I Felix Kraus as a young German boy, was forced into The Hitler Youth by my parents who supported the Nazis and the harm they had caused. I have never once agreed with the dehumanizing of innocent Jewish people; many were my close friends that I kept secret from my despicable parents. I went on as a German soldier, for I had no way out, not because I was concerned about my own safety. At the age of 18 I was stationed at Auschwitz concentration camp, where I witnessed by far the most heartbreaking moments of my life. My duties as an SS officer was to relocate the body’s once the Jewish people were executed by Zyklon B. Wearing a gas mask 20 minutes after the pellets were dropped, I would remove any gold fillings that could be melted down for money, as well as artificial limbs from the corpses. I will never fail to remember the blood curdling screams during that 20 minutes that felt like an eternity. I then transferred the bodies to the incinerator to be burned. Looking down at the lifeless faces of men, women and children made me realize their only fault was their denomination. After the incineration was complete we than shovelled the ashes and dispersed them as fertilizer. The most unfavorable aspect of being a German SS guard was seeing my former Jewish friends struggle to survive in the worst conditions possible. Knowing that I had some involvement in the millions of deaths that came from the Holocaust will forever follow me with guilt every day of my life. Writing this memoir brings me back to the most gruesome situations I have ever experienced. Once Adolf Hitler was dead I was then free from living in the shadow of a psychotic dictator who took the lives of many innocent victims.

Analysis:

The story I wrote is based on the greatest genocide of all time, which was The Holocaust. I wrote in a first person perspective to give the most emotion and set the tone of the struggles that an SS guard faced inside of Auschwitz, he like many others did not support the Nazi regime as Hitler’s behavior was abhorrent. This boy was raised to be a Nazi soldier against his own will, as well as how the situations he faced during his youth impacts his life to this day. The hardship he faced was being in such a morbid environment every day for months on end, he felt as if he would never escape the life-sucking atmosphere that is Auschwitz.