They said their sufferings were great on the passage, and several of their number had died.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We have to keep in mind that it's not just about the numbers of people who died; it's also the manner which many of these victims met their deaths.
How vivid is the suffering of the few when the people are few and how the suffering of nameless millions in two world wars is blurred over by numbers.
Suffering has roused them from the sleep of gentle life, and every day fills them with a terrible intoxication. They are now something more than themselves; those we loved were merely happy shadows.
The histories which we have of the great tragedy give no idea of the general wretchedness, the squalid misery, which entered into every individual life in the region given up to the war. Where the armies camped the destruction was absolute.
In the necessary memorialisation of the six million dead, there had been precious little attention paid to those who survived and how they survived.
They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.
Furthermore, they were constantly informed by all the camp authorities that they had been abandoned by the world: they were beggars and lucky to receive the daily soup of starvation.
The cholera had broken out at the post, and five or six men were dying daily.
Thousand got away to other countries; thousands returned to Spain tempted by false promises of kindness. By the tens of thousands, these Spaniards died of neglect in the concentration camps.
I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.