Surviving The Angel Of Death By Eva Mozes Kor

Surviving the Angel of Death is a novel written from the perspective of a young Jewish girl during the Holocaust. The author and narrator of this work, Eva Mozes Kor, tells an account of what happened to her and her twin sister Miriam during this devastating time. As twin sisters, Eva and Miriam were forced into being test subjects for Dr. Joseph Mengele’s various twin experiments during their stay at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Mengele is notorious for his nickname, “the angel of death,” which was given to him by his victims. The girls, who lived in Protz, Romania before their persecution, were only ten years old when they were captured by the Nazis, members of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers' Party.

In this novel,

As he examined each set of twins, he stopped when he came upon Eva and Miriam. Eva recalls being petrified at this moment. This reaction was justified in this circumstance because of the amount of seemingly limitless power that Doctor Mengele possessed. Eva narrates that the doctor “strode through the barracks… with an entourage of eight people accompanying him” (pg 38). It is shown through this statement that Mengele was aware of his power and his position. He had this power because he demanded it. He had made a name for himself in the camp and was well known for his scientific research and experiments that he conducted in the camps.

At one point in the novel, Eva states, “At Auschwitz dying was so easy. Surviving was a full-time job.” This is one of the most well-known quotes in the novel. Eva says this because it is the simple truth of the Holocaust. Death was practically inevitable for prisoners at concentration camps during the Holocaust. Prisoners experienced things including malnutrition, physical beatings, and were stripped of their dignity until they were barely alive. Upon their arrival, prisoners’ heads were shaved and they were made to get a tattoo of a series of numbers that would be used as a way to identify prisoners in the

self is defined as a conflict that happens within a character’s mind. One example of this in the media is when Luke Skywalker must decide whether to turn to the Dark Side or serve the powers of good in Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. Another well known conflict is known as character vs. self. This is when two characters, a protagonist and an antagonist, have the same goal or are in the way of the other achieving their goals. An example of this is Harry Potter’s conflict with Voldemort in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book series. An example of another popular conflict known as character vs. society, when a character goes against the rules of their society, is when Shrek is faced with adversity and prejudice from the townspeople and is forced to live life as an outcast. The final type of conflict mentioned in this book is known as character vs. nature. This is when a character is faced with setbacks and struggles due to natural forces in nature. An example of this is in the movie Castaway starring Tom Hanks. In this movie, protagonist Chuck survives a plane crash and has to live on a deserted island by himself and do his best to survive. I think that the conflict that was the hardest for Eva and the rest of the twins is the character vs. self conflict. Every day, these children were faced with unspeakable horrors and it would have been easy to give into the fear and confusion and give up the will to live. But instead of