Survivor Memoirs Video - Shmoop (2024)

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Survivor Memoirs, a la Shmoop. Let's get one thing straight... survivor memoirs

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aren't in-depth looks at the lives of former reality television stars. Although we're

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sure those would be fascinating as well...

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Rather, survivor memoirs are works by people who either survived a concentration camp,

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or who based their stories on the experiences of someone who did. We're talking REAL survivors.

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The important thing to remember is that, no matter what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad <<mah-mood

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ah-mah-DIH-nee-zhahd>> says...

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...these works, and the Holocaust they recount, aren't fiction.

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Let's start with Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night. Wiesel was deported to Auschwitz in 1944,

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along with every other Jew in his hometown.

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Wiesel, however, not only survived Auschwitz, but a death march to Dachau<<da-COW>>. Eventually,

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he became a journalist. The first version of Night was published in

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Yiddish and was over 900 pages long. Just be thankful you don't have to read that version...

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Wiesel later edited his memoir down to a much, much shorter text. Granted, even the abridged

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version of Night didn't sell many copies at first, because the Holocaust makes for a depressing

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read.

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By 1997, however, Night was selling about 300,000 copies a year, and that was before

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Oprah picked it for her book club and passed out copies to her audience.

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In 1986, Weisel also won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work against violence and racism.

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Another famous memoir was written by Primo Levi<<Pree-mo leh-vee>> who was born in Italy

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in 1919. Levi was extraordinarily smart and, despite rampant prejudice against Jews, he

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was allowed to study chemistry at the university in Turin.

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Unfortunately, by the time Levi graduated, Italy had officially become the sniveling

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minion to Germany's big, nasty bully. In 1943, Levi joined the Italian resistance

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movement. He was really bad at it...

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...like, really bad...

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...and was quickly arrested by the Germans. He admitted to being Jewish in order to avoid

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being shot, and was sent to Auschwitz.

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The end result was his memoir Survival in Auschwitz, which he wrote shortly after his

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release from the camp in 1945. Maus, by Art Spiegelman, is different from

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both Night and Survival in Auschwitz in two major ways. Its author was never in a concentration

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camp... and Maus is a graphic novel.

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Spiegelman's parents were Polish Jews, who came to New York after World War Two. Their

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story is the one Spiegelman relates in Maus. Originally a three-page strip for an underground

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series of comics called Funny Animals, the first volume of Maus came out in 1986. It

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proved incredibly popular, and a second volume came out in 1991.

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In 1992, Spiegelman won a special Pulitzer Prize for Maus. Since then, the graphic novel

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has become a serious form of art, helped along by Spiegelman's success in tackling a topic

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as difficult as the Holocaust. Another memoir was written by Simon Wiesenthal<<wise-en-thall>>,

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Nazi hunter. Seriously... that was his job.

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After World War Two ended and Wiesenthal was released from Mauthausen<<mout-house-en>>,

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he immediately became involved in tracking down, arresting, and trying Nazi war criminals.

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He also founded the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, which has tracked down hundreds

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of Nazi war criminals, many of whom escaped to places like South America.

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His memoir, The Sunflower, is probably less factual than some of the other books you're

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going to read...

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...but when fact is as gruesome as the Holocaust was...

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...sometimes a little fiction can be a welcome device.

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