Question: What does the author mean when he says "One of the fields of ashes in Birkenau carries more weight than all the testimonies about Birkenau"?
<em>Options:</em>
- A) The significance of the lost lives in the camps far outweighs the stories of those who survived.
- B) The ashes are physically heavier than the books in which the testimonies were written.
- C) The Nazis did not truthfully testify about what really went on in the various camps.
- D) Birkenau was the worst of all the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
Answer: The correct answer is: <u>A) The significance of the lost lives in the camps far outweighs the stories of those who survived.
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Explanation: Eli Wiesel was an American Jewish writer, professor and Holocaust survivor. One of his most famous books is <em>Night</em>, where he wrote about his experiences and gave his historic testimony as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camps.
Auschwitz is three large sites: Auschwitz I, where Polish inmates were quickly worked to death; Auschwitz-Birkenau, which held four gas chambers and four crematoria; and Auschwitz III-Monowitz-Buna, focused on slave labor. Wiesel was in all three but he mentions that Auschwitz-Birkenau was the worst.
In his book <em>Night</em>, he wrote the following: "One of the fields of ashes in Birkenau carries more weight than all the testimonies about Birkenau". This helps us understand that the significance of the lost lives in the camps far outweighs the stories of those who actually survived because more than 1.1 million Jews and about two hundred thousand Poles, gypsies, homosexuals and others died in Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1940 and 1945.
