What was madame schachter

Who was it who had cried out? It was Madame Schachter. Standing in the middle of the wagon, in the pale light from the windows, she looked like a withered tree in a cornfield.

Look at it! A terrible fire! Oh, that fire! Some of the men pressed up against the bars. There was nothing there; only the darkness. The shock of this terrible awakening stayed with us for a long time. We still trembled from it. With every groan of the wheels on the rail, we felt that an abyss was about to open beneath our bodies.

Powerless to still our own anguish, we tried to console ourselves. Sit down. Some women tried to calm her. There are huge flames! It is a furnace! It was as though she were possessed by an evil spirit, which spoke from the depths of her being. We tried to explain it away, more to calm ourselves and to recover our own breath than to comfort her. Our terror was about to burst the sides of the train.

Our nerves were at breaking point. Our flesh was creeping. It was as though madness were taking possession of us all. We could stand it no longer. Some of the young men forced her to sit down, tied her up, and put a gag in her mouth. Silence again. The little boy sat down by his mother, crying. I had begun to breathe normally again. We could hear the wheels churning out that monotonous rhythm of a train traveling through the night.

We could begin to doze, to rest, to dream. An hour or two went by like this. Then another scream took our breath away. Flames, flames everywhere.

Once more the young men tied her up and gagged her. They even struck her. Shut her up! She can keep her mouth shut. Her little boy clung to her; he did not cry out; he did not say a word. He was not even weeping now. An endless night. Toward dawn, Madame Schachter calmed down. Crouched in her corner, her bewildered gaze scouring the emptiness, she could no longer see us.

She stayed like that all through the day, dumb, absent, isolated among us. They were tired of hitting her. The heat, the thirst, the pestilential stench, the suffocating lack of air — these were as nothing compared with these screams which tore us to shreds. A few days more, and we should all have started to scream, too.

But we had reached a station. The cherished objects we had brought with us thus far were left behind in the train, and with them, at last, our illusions. Every two yards or so an SS man held his tommy gun trained on us. Hand in hand we followed the crowd. An SS noncommissioned officer came to meet us, a truncheon in his hand.

Although no fire is visible, she terrifies the Jews in the car, who are reminded that they do not know what awaits them. Finally, she is tied up and gagged so that she cannot scream. Her child, sitting next to her, watches and cries. The prisoners on the train find out, when the train eventually stops, that they have reached Auschwitz station. This name means nothing to them, and they bribe some locals to get news. They are told that they have arrived at a labor camp where they will be treated well and kept together as families.

This news comes as a relief, and the prisoners let themselves believe, again, that all will be well. The train moves slowly and at midnight passes into an area enclosed by barbed wire. Through the windows, everybody sees the chimneys of vast furnaces. Why don't they tell the new arrivals what to expect?

They also arrange the newcomers by age to decide who will work and who will be sent to the crematorium. They don't tell the new arrivals what to expect because they do not what to alarm them or tip them off to what might happen. If they keep hope alive, perhaps they will be more permissive. Is Madame Schachter a prophet? She is a middle-aged woman who goes crazy after she's separated from her husband and packed into a cattle car headed to Auschwitz.

What is the slogan for Auschwitz? God as a result of his experiences in the concentration camp. What might have been the source of Madame Schachter's visions of fire? The most likely reason for Madame Schachter's screams is that she had been told by her neighbors of the horrible furnaces and fires used in the concentration camps. She knew what she was about to be entering and was doing her best to cope with reality. How did the other people react to Madame Schachter?

Answer: The other people in the car reacted to Madame Schachter by believing her, trying to comfort her, beating her, and eventually gagging her. What did the Jews in the train car discover when they looked out the window? His next thought is to through himself against the electric wires that surround the camp.

Why did the author thank God for mud? The author thanked God for mud because his new shoes were covered in mud.

If a guard saw that you had new shoes on, you had to hand them over and get brutally hit. Eliezer lies to Stein, telling him that his wife Reizel and children are fine. Wiesel seems to affirm that life without faith or hope of some kind is empty. Yet, even in rejecting God, Eliezer and his fellow Jews cannot erase God from their consciousness.

When Stein hears the real news about his wife and children, he does not return. Table of Contents. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits.

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