Way People Live: Life in Nazi Concentration Camp

by Anne Grenn Saldinger

Book Overview

Life in a Nazi concentration camp was far worse than anything the prisoners had imagined or experienced. Thousands of people were killed upon arrival at death camps, countless others were worked to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560064854
• ISBN13: 9781560064855
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Lucent Books
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.8" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

Excellent Handling of a Serious Subject

The book does a good job in revealing a complete story of survival of the terrible conditions in the Nazi Concentration Camps. I feel that the target audience was those in the 7 - 9th grades. The book also has a very complete bibliography at the end. While focusing primarily on the plight of the Jews in the Camps, the book also brings out that millions of others were interned in the Camps for various reasons. The book also details the means by which Hitler's SS systematically exterminated millions of innocent victims. The author does subscribe to the very correct line of thought that we must all remember this atrocious crime against humanity so that it isn't repeated. This book would be a great book for anyone who would like to find out more about the Concentration Camps.

An informative text for teenagers studying the Holocaust

At last, a text that depicts life in a concentration camp as experienced by a mosaic of those who lived it. Dr. Anne Grenn Saldinger's 108 page text, Life in a Nazi Concentration Camp, provides the teen-aged reader with a sense of the vastness of the Nazi concentration camp system. She includes a sidebar entitled "shattered teenage dreams" that describes the experience of those the same age as her young readers, thus allowing for maximum identification. Throughout, Dr. Grenn Saldinger connects these experiences to the lessons to be learned for today. Details from a variety of survivor's videotaped histories or memoirs illustrate her narrative that explains how the Nazis implemented the "Final Solution," the Nazi euphemism for the genocide of the Jews. She begins with Nazi ideology that gave rise to the camp system. There is a short chapter describing the Jews' transition from ghetto to camp, a crucial step in the extermination process often omitted in Holocaust literature. Her young reader will learn important details such as Jews were not the only victims, prisoners had to wear triangles which colors represented the various persecuted groups, and that every inmate had to master unwritten rules of survival. The question of resistance is answered by presenting examples such as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the bombing of a crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau. She emphasizes that staying alive under the dehumanizing conditions also demonstrated active resistance against the Nazi determination to eradicate all Jewish life.Dr. Grenn Saldinger describes the inhumane conditions clearly and vividly both by her descriptions and by survivor testimony. Her examples do not dwell on the revolting and are sometimes uplifting. For example, she cites the story of a Gypsy (one of the groups targeted for extinction by the Nazis) inmate who saved 16 Jewish children. These children lived to liberation thanks to the Gypsy boy's initiative. The appendix lists the major concentration and death camps followed by an abbreviated glossary of terms. Her suggestions for further reading include an annotated list of a dozen texts suitable for teenagers.On the next to the last page, Dr. Grenn Saldinger includes the pledge against intolerance created by the World of Difference Institute of the Anti-Defamation League that enables the reader to recognize and declare "that respect for individual dignity, achieving equality, and opposing anti-Semitism, racism, ethnic bigotry, homophobia, or any other form of hatred is a non-negotiable responsibility of all people." As a Holocaust educator, I have been looking for and finally found a text on this subject that won't exhaust my students. I highly recommend this book even if you are not a Holocaust educator. It includes virtually all of the relevant issues for today's youth studying the Holocaust.