How is it possible for one to turn on his own father, to murder him like he never knew him before? It seems impossible for a fathers own son to kill him for a piece of bread. This is what death camps did to people. A son killed his father so he could eat a piece of bread which his father had saved. The Rabbi’s son sped up and left his father behind while marching away from a camp which was about to be taken by the Russian soldiers. Through Eli’s actions and decisions he caused cruel and painful things to happen to his father. Why did this happen, was it because the sons did not love their fathers, or was it because they did not think they could survive if their fathers were with them?
The starving Jewish men had been in the cattle car for a long time and they would do anything to each other for crumbs of bread. Sons would kill their own fathers for a measly little piece of bread. In one incident a young man notices that an older man has a piece of bread so he jumps on the man and begins to try to take the bread. As the young man is trying to take the bread the older man says, "Meir. Meir, my boy! Don’t you recognize me? I’m your father . . . you’re hurting me . . . you’re killing your father! I’ve got some bread . . . for you too . . . for you too. . . ." The son proceeds to beat the man until he is dead. After his father is dead he takes the bread from his fathers fist and tries to devour it. Before he can get the bread to his mouth several other men realize what is happening and they pounce on the young man. They beat him until he is dead and then take the bread. What had just happened here? A son killed his own father, and for what, a piece of bread. The son didn’t even have a chance to eat the bread before he was killed. Now there were two corpses, when if the young man would have shared the bread with his father there would be no corpses lying next to each other. Why did this all happen? Was it because the son did not love his father or was it because the son was starving and he thought that he had a better chance to survive than his father? This is what the camps did to this father and son. The camps are the only thing that can be held accountable for what had happened.
The prisoners were marching away from the camp they had been at for so long because the Russian army was nearing closer and closer. The SS Guards made the prisoners keep speeding up their pace until they were running. The older men were the first to slow down and be shot dead, then it was the ill who were shot. A father and son that had stuck by each others side for three years were marching side by side. The son sped up and left his father behind. Why did he do this? Was it because he felt that he could not survive if he stayed with his father, or was it because he felt his father was going to tire and be shot dead and he did not want to see his own father die? Whatever reason it was, it was another fatality of the concentration camps.
Even Eli had some effects of cruelty against his own father. Eli loved his father and didn’t leave his side until after he had died. Yet Eli felt that it was his fathers own fault when he was beaten because he had made one of the guards mad. Eli said that his father should have known how to avoid the guards outbreaks. When Franek, the foreman, asked Eli to give him the gold crown from his tooth, Eli refused at first, then said that he would have to talk it over with his father. He decided not to give up the crown, so Franek took it out on Eli in the one place he knew would hurt him, on his father. Franek made his father do extra work and gave him less for the work he did. He insulted his father for the fact that he could not march in rhythm like the other prisoners. Eli let this go on for awhile when all he had to do was give Franek his gold crown. Finally Eli gave him his gold crown. Yet his father had been beaten because of a decision that Eli had made.
These incidents are different from one another in that one of them was pain given to a father through a decision his son made and the other two are incidents that the sons directly inflicted on their fathers. Though all of these incidents were affects of the camps, none of them happened because the sons did not love their fathers. They all happened because of the camps and because the sons thought maybe they could survive better without their fathers slowing them down. It is not right for a son to hurt or even kill his own father, but these people had no control over what they did to each other. The camps had turned them all into beasts that had only one mission, to survive, and they would do whatever was necessary to survive.