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I want to write a story about the Nazi camps

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Joe90
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09 Jul 2019, 12:32 pm

I'd like to write a story about the Nazi camps in WW2, like through a child's eyes, about a Jewish boy and his family being lured to the concentration camps believing it is going to be a life of luxury then finding out how it really is, and putting lots of emphasis into the story about how bad it was. But I have very little knowledge on what actually happened; how all the thousands of Jews got there and what they did once they were there and how long they were there for before they died or the end of the war.

I have looked up information on Google but it's still too complicated for me to take in, also I find it hard to focus on reading. I have lots of questions that I want answered specifically but simply.

Does anyone here, maybe with a special interest in this sort of thing, perhaps know bits of information that I can write a story with?

In the beginning of the story, I want the reader to be as none the wiser as the characters as what's going on. The reader gets misled into thinking that the characters are off on holiday or something, then start to realise throughout the story that it is obviously no holiday.
So I want the story to start off as a normal Jewish family living their normal lives until they receive...whatever lured them all to the concentration camps.

Was it a false advertising campaign where Jews received a brochure fooling them into joining some sort of luxury adventure club or exotic holiday?
I know lots of people were packed on trains, but when they first arrived to the Nazi camps were they tortured straight away, if not, how long did it take for them to realise how horrific it was?
What did the Nazi soldiers do to the children? Were they separated from their parents?
What sort of work did all the prisoners (children and adults), do each day?

I'm not sure whether to have the main characters escape at some point and go on to live their lives. But I just need some information on how the camps were, then we'll worry about the escape part later.

Thank you for your input.


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09 Jul 2019, 12:37 pm

My trauma psychologist is a concentration camp survivor. His parents were murdered. He and his brother were adopted to New York.


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12 Jul 2019, 1:57 am

I don't know of a single concentration camp inmate who had been lured into a death camp. Rather they had been rounded up, usually at night by the SS in occupied territories.


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12 Jul 2019, 1:13 pm

This is a very sensitive subject, so if you are wanting to write anything about this subject you will have to do tons of research, it isn't a topic you can make up or half ass. I wouldn't write about this if you know zero.


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12 Jul 2019, 2:13 pm

Joe90 wrote:
I want to write a story about a Jew being in the Nazi camps, but I'm struggling with some of the facts about it to make the story really get through to the reader emotionally. I've researched a lot about the Nazi camps in Poland and have gathered enough facts, but I still want to know what tricked the Jews into getting to the camps in the first place.
I was going to post this for you in another thread, but here is my Suggestion: Write the story (as you described above -- a story within a story) from the POV of an historian who discovered that one of her ancestors survived a death camp, in spite of having been a Polish Jew who was among the first to be taken from the Warsaw ghetto. As the historian digs deeper into the history of the ancestor, the death camp, and the other people there, she slowly begins to uncover evidence that the ancestor was a collaborator, and may have actually been on the regular payroll as a high-ranking official in the deathcamp government. When she confided her suspicions to an older relative, she starts receiving death threats. When the older relative is horribly murdered, she realizes that she must find out the truth before it's too late. But whom can she trust? The timid librarian whose maiden name is the same as the former deathcamp director's? The dashing young man with the secret past? The elderly Jewish couple whom she rents her flat from? The Police detective who already seems to know too much about her? ...
Joe90 wrote:
But I'm not sure if this counts as fiction or non-fiction?
The genre is "Mystery/Historical Fiction", if you follow my suggestion above. Remember that there must be murder, there must be action, there must be sexual tension, and there must be a climactic scene that surprises the reader without a deus ex machina or other cheat -- all suspects must be presented in the first chapter, all clues must be known to the reader, and there should be nothing involving the supernatural, a global conspiracy, or an exposition by the villain (i.e., "I suppose you're wondering why I did it. Well, before I kill you, I'll tell you everything..." :roll: ). Show, don't tell!



Last edited by Fnord on 12 Jul 2019, 6:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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12 Jul 2019, 2:28 pm

I like your story idea, Joe.
It reminds me a bit of Diary of Pelly D and Cherry Heaven


How it actually happened IRL was that it started with the laws in the 1930's. Jews lost a lot of rights by law.

When it got to the point where they were sent to the concentration camps, they weren't told it would be paradise, but they were lead to believe they would have better lives there and get employment.

There's a good article about it here: https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/euro ... -1.5492545


Quote:
Hospitals, soccer teams and theater performances were some of the methods employed by the Nazis to maintain a benign facade at Westerbork camp

Nothing about the footage that Rudolf Breslauer filmed here on May 30, 1944, suggests that it was taken inside one of Europe’s largest Nazi concentration camps.

In the film by Breslauer, a German-Jewish inmate of the Westerbork camp in Holland’s northeast, prisoners are seen playing soccer enthusiastically in team uniforms, complete with a referee in a special outfit.

A middle-aged man wearing a suit and a boy who may have been his grandson stroll cheerfully in the sun past spectators. In other segments, inmates are seen putting on theater performances, working in modern factories and even going to church – an activity undertaken by many German Jews before the Holocaust, including some who had converted to Christianity just before or during the Holocaust in a vain effort to escape persecution by the Nazis.

The film is one of only two cinematic works known to have been produced inside a functioning concentration camp for Jews.

Commissioned by Westerbork’s commanders for propaganda purposes, Breslauer’s film is a rare documentation of the sophisticated facade employed by the Nazis at the camp, where 75 years ago they began carrying out the systematic murder of three quarters of Dutch Jewry – the highest death rate in Nazi-occupied Western Europe. Westerbork served as a so-called transit camp from which 100,000 Dutch Jews were shipped to Nazi death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The subterfuge maintained the illusion that the camp’s inmates were sent to work camps, giving them hope and an incentive to comply with orders that helped ensure Westerbork’s deadly efficiency.

The deceit extended far beyond the possibly staged scenes that Breslauer captured with his camera.

“The size of Camp Westerbork’s hospital, which was one of the best and largest hospitals of its kind, symbolizes the Nazi lie that Jews were going to be put to work” further east.

“It was one of a great many German efforts focused at making sure that Jews did not understand what the Nazis were up to.”

These efforts paid off, according to Henny Dormits, 87, a Holocaust survivor who lived in the camp with her family for two years before they were sent to Theresienstadt.

While Jews in many other parts of Europe were subjected to violence, torture, abuse and murder in camps, in Westerbork, “people were not abused, they were treated correctly,” she said during an interview for Dutch television in 2011.

The Germans “did everything possible to keep people calm here so no one was afraid,” Dormits recalled. And so when people were shipped off in cattle carts, “everyone assumed we’d be going to another work camp.”

Westerbork included many amenities that Jewish concentration camp inmates elsewhere could only dream of, including permits to leave camp without supervision – given exclusively to people with family still inside the camp, so they would not escape – and cabaret productions with musical instruments.

But it was the quality of medical treatment in Westerbork that clinched the illusion, according to Dormits.

“People were operated on here by the best doctors, they would be hospitalized for entire weeks as they healed, and when they were all better they were put on a transport,” she recalled in the documentary. “This was the make-believe world in which we lived.”

This form of deception was extremely effective.

The message of the hospital was, “We Germans have the best intentions for you, get better in this large hospital so we can put you to work elsewhere.”

“When disaster happens slowly, in installments, people have a tendency to accept each installment,” said Jacobs, who in 2014 shocked many Dutchmen when he said that anti-Semitism in the Netherlands means he would advise his congregants to live in Israel or the United States. “This is what happened here. So I think we cannot afford to stay silent and just hope for the best.”




Joe90 wrote:
I know lots of people were packed on trains, but when they first arrived to the Nazi camps were they tortured straight away, if not, how long did it take for them to realise how horrific it was?
What did the Nazi soldiers do to the children? Were they separated from their parents?
What sort of work did all the prisoners (children and adults), do each day?

When they arrived at the actual death camps, the nazis separated out the older boys and men. The women and children were told they would go the showers first. Of course what happened was that they were gassed immediately, while the men and older boys were set to hard labor.

An old Holocaust survivor once told me that when he heard that the women and kids were sent to the showers right away, he thought that the nazis were at least somewhat humane treating the women and kids better. It made him relieved until he learned the truth.

I hope that helps.


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12 Jul 2019, 3:04 pm

I like the idea of your story...

However it does not really reflect the actual events of the holocaust, and it is a touchy subject so people could be offended if you set a story during the holocaust but then change how it went down. If you want to be historically accurate they were more forced than lured to the camps...also families where usually separated.

That said you could make a fictional universe/world...where there is a facist regime like the nazis, and they trick people they want to 'do away with/imprison' by advertising some good place they can go...only for the characters to realize they've been tricked. It is a great idea for a story, but I think creating your own setting than setting it during the actual holocaust would be better.


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12 Jul 2019, 3:16 pm

Skilpadde wrote:
When they arrived at the actual death camps, the nazis separated out the older boys and men. The women and children were told they would go the showers first. Of course what happened was that they were gassed immediately, while the men and older boys were set to hard labor.

An old Holocaust survivor once told me that when he heard that the women and kids were sent to the showers right away, he thought that the nazis were at least somewhat humane treating the women and kids better. It made him relieved until he learned the truth.

I hope that helps.


As far as I know they did not actually immediately gas all the women and children, not to say they were humane with them but they certainly kept women and children around in the camps for labor. They also experimented on people.

The way I understood it was they immediately gassed people they did not see a use for. That was not the case with all women and children who came through...more like mothers with babies, very small children, old women, disabled women, but also old men and disabled men.


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12 Jul 2019, 5:11 pm

Fnord wrote:
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Joe90 wrote:
I want to write a story about a Jew being in the Nazi camps, but I'm struggling with some of the facts about it to make the story really get through to the reader emotionally. I've researched a lot about the Nazi camps in Poland and have gathered enough facts, but I still want to know what tricked the Jews into getting to the camps in the first place.
I was going to post this for you in another thread, but here is my Suggestion: Write the story (as you described above -- a story within a story) from the POV of an historian who discovered that one of her ancestors survived a death camp, in spite of having been a Polish Jew who was among the first to be taken from the Warsaw ghetto. As the historian digs deeper into the history of the ancestor, the death camp, and the other people there, she slowly begins to uncover evidence that the ancestor was a collaborator, and may have actually been on the regular payroll as a high-ranking official in the deathcamp government. When she confided her suspicions to an older relative, she starts receiving death threats. When the older relative is horribly murdered, she realizes that she must find out the truth before it's too late. But whom can she trust? The timid librarian whose maiden name is the same as the former deathcamp director's? The dashing young man with the secret past? The elderly Jewish couple whom she rents her flat from? The Police detective who already seems to know too much about her? ...
Joe90 wrote:
But I'm not sure if this counts as fiction or non-fiction?
The genre is "Mystery/Historical Fiction", if you follow my suggestion above. Remember that there must be murder, there must be action, there must be sexual tension, and there must be a climactic scene that surprises the reader without a deus ex machina or other cheat -- all suspects must be presented in the first chapter, all clues must be known to the reader, and there should be nothing involving the supernatural, a global conspiracy, or an exposition by the villain (i.e., "I suppose you're wondering why I did it. Well, before I kill you, I'll tell you everything..." :roll: ). Show, don't tell!


That's very good.


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12 Jul 2019, 6:48 pm

smudge wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Joe90 wrote:
I want to write a story about a Jew being in the Nazi camps, but I'm struggling with some of the facts about it to make the story really get through to the reader emotionally. I've researched a lot about the Nazi camps in Poland and have gathered enough facts, but I still want to know what tricked the Jews into getting to the camps in the first place.
I was going to post this for you in another thread, but here is my Suggestion: Write the story (as you described above -- a story within a story) from the POV of an historian who discovered that one of her ancestors survived a death camp, in spite of having been a Polish Jew who was among the first to be taken from the Warsaw ghetto. As the historian digs deeper into the history of the ancestor, the death camp, and the other people there, she slowly begins to uncover evidence that the ancestor was a collaborator, and may have actually been on the regular payroll as a high-ranking official in the deathcamp government. When she confided her suspicions to an older relative, she starts receiving death threats. When the older relative is horribly murdered, she realizes that she must find out the truth before it's too late. But whom can she trust? The timid librarian whose maiden name is the same as the former deathcamp director's? The dashing young man with the secret past? The elderly Jewish couple whom she rents her flat from? The Police detective who already seems to know too much about her? ...
Joe90 wrote:
But I'm not sure if this counts as fiction or non-fiction?
The genre is "Mystery/Historical Fiction", if you follow my suggestion above. Remember that there must be murder, there must be action, there must be sexual tension, and there must be a climactic scene that surprises the reader without a deus ex machina or other cheat -- all suspects must be presented in the first chapter, all clues must be known to the reader, and there should be nothing involving the supernatural, a global conspiracy, or an exposition by the villain (i.e., "I suppose you're wondering why I did it. Well, before I kill you, I'll tell you everything..."). Show, don't tell!
That's very good.
Basic stuff, really.

:D



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12 Jul 2019, 8:31 pm

Fnord wrote:
smudge wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Joe90 wrote:
I want to write a story about a Jew being in the Nazi camps, but I'm struggling with some of the facts about it to make the story really get through to the reader emotionally. I've researched a lot about the Nazi camps in Poland and have gathered enough facts, but I still want to know what tricked the Jews into getting to the camps in the first place.
I was going to post this for you in another thread, but here is my Suggestion: Write the story (as you described above -- a story within a story) from the POV of an historian who discovered that one of her ancestors survived a death camp, in spite of having been a Polish Jew who was among the first to be taken from the Warsaw ghetto. As the historian digs deeper into the history of the ancestor, the death camp, and the other people there, she slowly begins to uncover evidence that the ancestor was a collaborator, and may have actually been on the regular payroll as a high-ranking official in the deathcamp government. When she confided her suspicions to an older relative, she starts receiving death threats. When the older relative is horribly murdered, she realizes that she must find out the truth before it's too late. But whom can she trust? The timid librarian whose maiden name is the same as the former deathcamp director's? The dashing young man with the secret past? The elderly Jewish couple whom she rents her flat from? The Police detective who already seems to know too much about her? ...
Joe90 wrote:
But I'm not sure if this counts as fiction or non-fiction?
The genre is "Mystery/Historical Fiction", if you follow my suggestion above. Remember that there must be murder, there must be action, there must be sexual tension, and there must be a climactic scene that surprises the reader without a deus ex machina or other cheat -- all suspects must be presented in the first chapter, all clues must be known to the reader, and there should be nothing involving the supernatural, a global conspiracy, or an exposition by the villain (i.e., "I suppose you're wondering why I did it. Well, before I kill you, I'll tell you everything..."). Show, don't tell!
That's very good.
Basic stuff, really.

:D


I concur.


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14 Jul 2019, 6:44 pm

Thanks for your ideas, guys.

It's OK, I know how dreadful those Nazi camps were. And I don't know zero about it. I've watched lots of videos on YouTube and have looked up a lot about it on Google, and I may buy one or two books about it to really educate me further. I do want to get the facts right.

I was going to write a story about the workhouses that took place in Britain back in the 1800s or early 1900s (I think), but I know even less about that than I do the Nazi camps, so I think I'm going to stick to writing about the Nazi camps.

I'm not too keen on writing about a fictional traumatic event, as I want to write about an existing traumatic event that can really remind the reader who is interested in that sort of thing how awful and shocking it was. A lot of people I know read books, and they seem more impressed when the story explains some very intense detail that shocks or frightens them, if they are looking for that kind of genre. Stephen King has become popular by writing his books.

I do a lot of fanfiction writing, but I want my story to be original this time, but about a real event that happened in history.


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17 Jul 2019, 9:07 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
I don't know of a single concentration camp inmate who had been lured into a death camp. Rather they had been rounded up, usually at night by the SS in occupied territories.


This.

They wouldn't "lure" you. It didn't work that way.

The SS would come to your door, and tell you that you were "being relocated", and they would haul you off, and you would end up in a cattle car on a freight train. on the way to one of the camps.


The one semi exception situation was that small Public Relations concentration camp that the Nazi set up for show late in the war.

There was a book about a real child who was sent to camp because of clerical error. And there were deaths camps just of kids too. There is PLENTY real nonfiction stuff if you have the stomach to endure reading about it. But for exactly that reason ...why make up fiction about it? There is already enough similar nonfiction.



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17 Jul 2019, 9:11 am

naturalplastic wrote:
There is PLENTY real nonfiction stuff if you have the stomach to endure reading about it.


That's the thing, Joe90, *I* don't have the stomach for that sort of thing. Would you be able to deal with what you read? Those sorts of stories might haunt you.


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17 Jul 2019, 9:15 am

Joe90 wrote:
Thanks for your ideas, guys.

It's OK, I know how dreadful those Nazi camps were. And I don't know zero about it. I've watched lots of videos on YouTube and have looked up a lot about it on Google, and I may buy one or two books about it to really educate me further. I do want to get the facts right.

I was going to write a story about the workhouses that took place in Britain back in the 1800s or early 1900s (I think), but I know even less about that than I do the Nazi camps, so I think I'm going to stick to writing about the Nazi camps.

I'm not too keen on writing about a fictional traumatic event, as I want to write about an existing traumatic event that can really remind the reader who is interested in that sort of thing how awful and shocking it was. A lot of people I know read books, and they seem more impressed when the story explains some very intense detail that shocks or frightens them, if they are looking for that kind of genre. Stephen King has become popular by writing his books.

I do a lot of fanfiction writing, but I want my story to be original this time, but about a real event that happened in history.


.

Please ..from now on...NEVER mention Stephen King in the same breath as nonfiction about the Holocaust (Or Rawanda, or etc). It's offensive because the Holocaust was a reality-that was vastly worse than any fantasy that Poe or Stephen King. or creators of slasher movies, could dream up.



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17 Jul 2019, 9:25 am

The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in human history. My trauma psychologist was interred as a toddler. His parents were killed, and he earned his PhD helping Holocaust victims with Complex PTSD, yet he remains too distressed to discuss what he knows. These people and their descendants do not want the story fictionalised. They don't even want to read accounts of the horror in History books, as it is very distressing, very real, and very traumatic to their recovery. Scholars spend years researching this topic with primary source material, so not to do a disservice to anyone's experience.


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