" .
It was with this last vision that I completed my reading and proceeded to go on-line and see some of the pictures myself. The famine that these people endured is truly one of the most inhumane acts I could ever imagine. To my own horror, I even found a web site (www.vho.org - in case you want to witness this travesty) that claims these maltreatments are falsified exaggerations. I then emailed them my own opinions on their ignorance.
As far as hard physical labor goes, Elie gives us brief looks at what a laborer's life might have been like. The German officers would choose the stronger looking men for the aforementioned labor, which Elie and his father were fortunate enough to avoid. Elie's father finds out early on at the camp that a friend of the family's back in Sighet had to put his own father in the furnace as a result of being chosen for such labor (pp. 32 - 33). .
Elie briefly mentions seeing workers when he first arrived, and he later hints at hard labor when an Allie bombing leveled several buildings (p. 58). However, during the bulk of their stay at the various camps, Elie and his father worked in a warehouse for electrical equipment (p. 47). It was at this warehouse that Elie received his whip-lashing for witnessing a foreman (Idek) in bed with a young Polish girl. Towards the end of their stay, we learn that Elie has moved on to loading heavy stones onto railway wagons (p. 70).
Wiesel writes of the deprivation of food most often. It seems as if the Germans had found a very powerful weapon in hunger. Numerous times during their stay at these camps, Elie and other Jews were rewarded for compliance with the guards by being offered double rations of bread or soup. Much more often, though, they were punished for their actions by being denied their bread or soup. Wiesel recounts multiple occasions of camp personnel coveting his gold tooth, before finally a Polish foreman bullied him into giving it up (p.