The horror trains Book

This book is said to be one of the most important books ever written about Holocaust. What I am referring here are not the history books but the first-hand experiences written and narrated by the people who were there when the Holocaust happened. Since I read a handful of these, I can't disagree. I even think that, in some aspects, this could be the MOST important of them all.

You see, Anne Frank wrote her diary at 13 while hiding in her house with her family so she was not able to include her harrowing experience in the concentration camp where she died. The writing was innocent, poignant and endearing but did not contain much. Victor Klemperer wrote his 3-volume diary but a good bulk of it was his experience trying to elude the authorities as he had an "Aryan" wife so, although he was asked to live in a ghetto, he did not experience being in a concentration camp. Imre Kertesz wrote his quasi-autobiographical novel telling the concentration camp experience of a 15-y/o boy, Gyorgy (George) in Auschwitz but he disavowed the strong biographical connection of the book to his life even if he was 14 when he was sent with his family to the camp. Last year, I was teary-eyed when I finished reading Elie Wiesel's since it was too emotional and the writing was haunting. However, Elie Wiesel was 16 during the Holocaust so he wrote from the perspective of a teenager. What I mean is that given that the tragedy was all sad and harrowing, we already knew the perspective of a child or a teenager from Anne Frank, Kertesz and Wiesel, so I thought I also would like to have the perspective of a grown-up survivor. This now is what Victor Frankl in his clinical book and Primo Levi in this book, provide.

In their books, Victor Frankl and Primo Levi recounted WHAT THEY DID TO SURVIVE. I thought that this could have only been possible to come from thinking adults who are expected to be less emotional and more rational than most teenagers.

Victor Frankl says that to survive, one has to hold on to the image of yourself stepping out of the camp and going back to your life prior to the concentration camp. Everyday, you think of yourself going back to your home, job, loved ones, hobby, etc. These happy images are so powerful, they will give you reason to hope and live.

Primo Levi is more comprehensive and to-the-point. He says three: (1) organization; (2) pity and (3) theft. Levi survived using #1 as he was a summa cum laude chemistry graduate from Turin so he got lucky to be asked to work in the laboratory making synthetic rubber inside Auschwitz. But in this book, he gave examples of the prisoners who thrived using the other two or combinations or all the three.

That's the reason why I said that this could, indeed, be the MOST important book written about the Holocaust. If it happens again (God forbid), you have the tips on how to survive. Those tips come from first hand experiences of people who experienced them. I mean, well, it is nice to cry and be sad after reading a book, but it better to have something like a survival handbook too.