Young Writers Society

Among other questions I want to ask, like about the treatment of the disabled/ill in Europe in WW2 (I am Christin with a Jewish background. I am chronicaly ill/disabled.)

I was curious about somthing...

Any good books/websites telling about the liberation of the camps. What the soldiers saw? What did they do with the camp victims? Anything about the process of healing, physically and mentally for the victims? What about assisting other needs,like housing and whatnot? What happened in the first few days of getting rescued for then? Anything detailed.

*Ahhhh...this is so *morbid* and unlike me. But, then agin, sense most of my ansestors died in the camps, I'm kinda interested in this stuff.*

Nothing graphic please.

I would recommend reading Elie Wiesel's Night if you had not. It's probably the best book about the Holocaust I've read, and he lived a long life so he has a lot to say.

If there are any Holocaust museums close to you I recommend checking them out, I've been personally in Boston, LA and DC. But if they're not the museums themselves have tons of online resources.

I concur Elinor's suggestion of Elie Wiesel's 'Night'!

I think it's part of a trilogy, actually, but I only read that one, and it was very good? Which feels weird to say about a book about such a horrific event, but yeah. It provides a strong-- and devastating-- look at how things were within the actual camps themselves, but was a good read nonetheless. I might have to pull it off my bookshelf again sometime.

As Hatt and Elinor suggested - I think one of the best ways to learn about the Holocaust is to get the first hand accounts - read the real stories of people who lived through it. A lot of those stories will by their nature be graphic, because that's the situation people were in. I'm not sure how one would go about researching the Holocaust in a way where they weren't confronted with the very worst of what humans are capable of - but these stories also show the best parts of humanity too - people who risked everything to help neighbors or survived the unthinkable.

Wiesel's book is a really good place to start. Another account is by Viktor Frankl, who was an Austrian-Jewish psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, and he speaks a bit about emotional/mental/spiritual components of survival in his book "Man's Search for Meaning". Another striking Holocaust survival account that I've read was "The Hiding Place" by Corrie Ten Boom.

Good luck in your research.

A site that is kind of all over the place with sources and encyclopedia records, is the one for United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. There's a section specifically for survivor commentary, which should be helpful.

So that should also be helpful for you with the overall treatment of those classified as disabled during that age. There's a lot of things that falls under the categorization and that brings in a lot of different factors/treatments.

I'm not sure exactly which answer you're looking for but the treatment of disabled citizens, might not be that good during the liberation either. The treatment of all prisoners by their rescuers is traditionally not great for WW2, so with consideration for the time period and treatment of the marginalized group, it will be better.
Just find the sources that tell you specifically.

I went on a weird "binge" of reading about the holocaust only a few months ago.

From what I remember, most of the liberation stories were almost... anticlimactic? You gave these people thinking about nothing other than surviving to that liberation day, and when they'd get there they'd often be in disbelief and honestly didn't know what to do with themselves. I know the guards in some of the camps simply left when it happened, and the prisoners were just like "wait, that's it? We're free?"

Also remember these people were malnurashed beyond comprehension, so when they got out often the first thing they were thinking about was food- or that's what they were still thinking about. There was an account I remember reading of someone (several people maybe? I can't remember) raiding a truck full of canned foods and just trying to get some food into themselves- right after they were released.

As far as how disabled people were treated; if you weren't able bodied, the Nazis didn't really want anything to do with You. So sadly a lot of them most likely were murdered.

But yes, as everyone has said: look up first hand accounts. There are so so many. Though of course be prepared because they're not at all pretty. After I did a bunch of reading on it I found I was rather discouraged about humanity in General! So. My suggestion is keeping your research to small doses at a time.

I agree with all those who mentioned Elie Wiesel's novel, Night. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry shows events of the Holocaust outside of a concentration camp from the perspective of a child. So, one would feel a psychological connection to the emotions of the girl. Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl is another good book. My sister reads (a lot) The Hiding Place; it is very impactful.

Other than reading accounts of the Holocaust and analyzing what the works say, I cannot think of works answering your specific answer unless you look in History textbooks on the Holocaust. Also, many of these works have introductions that have extra content on the Holocaust. In Wiesel's work, he reveals his psychological state through his religious journey before, during, and after his Holocaust experience; it is very powerful.