The human tragedy of the Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime during World War II. The adversity of this persecution influenced not only the European arena, but also peoples from all over the globe and their ideas.The impact caused by this ethnic cleansing was enormous. People’s lives were drastically changed as they were persecuted and tortured. Families were taken out of their homes and forced to move to distant locations in exile. Their destinations were unknown and their future was also unsettled for they did not know what would await them.That is exactly what happened to Esther Hautzig, the writer of The Endless Steppe, when she was just a little ten-year-old girl. Esther’s family, the Rudomins, was wealthy and ran a business in Vilna, Poland. They lived a happy and stable life until they were claimed to be “capitalists and therefore enemies of the people.” Consequently, they were put on a truck that would send them to the “Endless Steppe” of Siberia, where they would struggle to survive five long years of starvation and suffering (Hautzig 12).Esther shares her feelings with the readers throughout her book; she tells us what exactly felt like to be in a cattle car full of peasants who seemed to be handling the situation in a much better way than she and her family did. She tells us of when they get to their destination and of how she attempted to gain an education in the conditions they were subjected to.Hautzig’s Endless Steppe shows us the reality of the Holocaust; it puts us to think about our matters as very small and insignificant as we read about what the Rudomin Family had to go through and it makes us see how humans can become “monsters” and performs such horrible and outrageous things such as massive murders.Another book that illustrates the calamity of the Holocaust is Memories of my life in a Polish Village, by T.K. Fluek....
