The author Michael Mason wrote about many memories of his life before the war. He wrote about his family, his father’s businesses, and their Shabbat traditions. He also mentions his friends and some troublesome adventures led by a boy named Joska. As a young child, he was happy and life was peaceful, but Mason recognized the antisemitism in his hometown. The Jews were being marginalized and some Jewish businesses were the target of crime and vandalism. Once the war broke out, the author suffered greatly being separated from his family, forced into labour, starved, and beaten; thus, disrupting his sense of home. Even years after the war and immigrating to Canada, Mason expressed feeling unsure about going back to his home country because of the overwhelming amount of terrible memories. Mason described the train ride to Auschwitz as miserable. Around sixty to eighty Jews were put into one cattle car and were left there for two full days and nights with no water, food, or bathroom breaks. At the concentration camps, the Nazis assigned each person a number that they would be referred as. Not only were their names taken away, they were forced to work, starved, beaten, and tortured. The Nazis treated the Jews with vicious inhumanity. …show more content…
Before the war, his father hired a bouncer, Gyula, who taught Mason many tips he believes helped him survive in the concentration camps. During the war, he met many people who looked out for him including a German soldier. It was during his time in a camp in the forest where for a couple days Mason hid in the camp to avoid going to work. He was waiting for the opportunity to hide when a German soldier whispered, telling me to go to work. Back at the camp after work, he discovered that everyone who hid in the camp was murdered. Herr Jacques, a foreman and elderly man, and Michel, a bunker leader, felt obligated to look after Mason because he was just a young