Lessons Learned In Memories In Focus By Pinchas Gutter

Memories in Focus is a memoir by Pinchas Gutter which follows his life and individual experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust. At ten-years-old Pinchas Gutter and his family were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to Majdenek, one of the largest Jewish concentration camps run by the Nazis. From day one, Gutter was left to survive on his own when his mother, father, and twin sister were murdered within less than 24 hours of arriving in Majdenek. Throughout the memoir, Pinchas Gutter talks about valuable life lessons that allowed him to persist through and overcome the most brutal moments during the Holocaust, including events such as the Death March. The three most important life lessons in this memoir are; the importance of becoming a bigger person, helping one

In the memoir, Gutter talks about what he remembers from the first day of liberation in Czechoslovakia when the German soldiers were assaulted by Czechs, soviet soldiers, and survivors. In that instance, instead of feeling hatred, he felt sympathy and continued to explain why. “ I remember very clearly my own sentiments of pity and commiseration toward these German refugees because they reminded me of my own suffering and the suffering of my family… Even after all these years, I still find it intriguing that instead of the intense hatred I should have felt toward these people because they were German, what I felt was empathy” (pg 86). Gutter shares that although these German soldiers tortured him and killed his friends and family, ultimately, seeing them get assaulted upset him because it only resulted in more hate and no resolution. Gutter knew at that exact moment how those soldiers felt when they were attacked because it happened to him and millions of others. So