Imagine if you can, being a thirteen year old girl in love with boys, school and family life. Then suddenly in a matter of hours your life is shattered by the arrival of a foreign army. You can no longer attend school ,have possessions or talk to your friends. Your family has to leave your house behind and live in a crowded ghetto, where you lose all privacy and there isn't enough food to eat. Still you manage to adjust, not knowing  that there is so much worse to come.
          This is the story of Elli Friedmann, who was thirteen years old when the Nazis invaded Hungary. Her story is an amazing journey of survival against all odds. She managed to become one of few teenage girls on work duty in Auschwitz. Her golden locks were the only thing between a job and being  exterminated. When Elli and her mother arrived in Auschwitz the Nazis officers were sending people into two separate place, one line went to the left and the other to the right. Elli's sickly and depressed aunt, who just couldn't cope with every thing that was happening to her ended up getting sent to the left. The guard  took one of Elli's braids in his hand and asked her how old she was and whether or not she was Jewish. She replied, thirteen and yes. The S.S. man sent Elli and her mother to the right, never to see her aunt again.
           For Elli to become a survivor of the Holocaust she had to keep it together. Many people just couldn't handle the cruel and harsh treatment, Elli's aunt was one of those people and she didn't last more than one day in Auschwitz. I think Elli was very mature for her age, the guard told her she was big for her age also, and from now on you are sixteen not thirteen. At one point Elli made a major decision, which would prove to be key for her survival. The S.S. were separating the people who were wounded and not able to work from the people who still had work left in them. Elli's mother was feeling the affects of the terrible treatment she had been under going, she was starving and she was unable to support herself for any period of time. Elli was worried about her mother and she was helping her as much as she could. When it came time for the guards to look at them her mother managed to make them believe that she was able to work. When it was Elli's turn, the guards noticed that she had a badly injured leg from when a guard kicked her. The guard swiftly sent her to the opposite line from her mother. Elli was in a panic, they were shipping her mother out of the camp and she could not let them take her. She begged the guards to let her join her mother but they did not care. People have been shot for this very thing Elli was about to do. She switched lines, she waited for the right time and she quickly switched. It turns out that this group of women were getting out of Auschwitz and going back to Augsburg, where the German army were occupying. When they arrived and got of the train the German soldiers asked where are your belongings and they answered we have none, they were amazed and could not believe that they were being treated this way.
            I can understand one Dictator being insane and becoming out of control but how did he manage to build an army of S.S. men that felt the same way he did. It is impossible to carry out these orders unless you felt Hitler was doing the right thing. This was 1945 not 1795, people knew better than this. How can a Nazis smash a babies head into the side of a truck after he fell out the back because it was over loaded. Can you really tell that this is a Jewish baby and not a German baby, did they really think that this was the appropriate behavior, this is what god wanted then to do. This disgust me and I find I am physically sick to my stomach from reading stories of the Holocaust. I find myself feeling overwhelmed with sorrow for the Jewish race, they should have never went through this. I feel compelled to talk to all of them and discuss this with them and make it right. At times I get very angry wondering how any one could do these things. Part of me says grab one of their rifle's and kill as many as you can until they kill you because your dead anyway.
           I think the biggest reason for survival was luck. Some had special talents that helped them to be of some use to the Nazis. I think it was important to stay productive and not get hurt or let the conditions get to you . You had to put up a good front so they would think you were able to work. The first thing they did  at Auschwitz was to kill the old people, they  wanted  young strong people. At the beginning of the Holocaust the Jews did not know how to react but as time went on the survivors started to pick up on what would give them the best chance to survive.