Extra Credit

Today I attended the Life at the Edge: David Koker’s Concentration Camp Diary presented by Dr. Robert Jan Van Pelt at Miami Dade College Kendall Campus. I found the presentation to be very interesting. It was a different view of what took place during the holocaust from inside the concentration camps other than the story of Anne Frank. The diary was intended for his girlfriend to read at the time which he describes everything in such detail and passion.

David was captured in March of 1945 and was sent to the concentration camp called Vugut. It was crazy to me the things a twenty one year old was experiencing at a very young age. David had to make choice whether to stay with his family or not and then to make the hardest decision in my opinion as to who he was selecting to go to the prisoner camp on a daily basis. Eventually David finds out of the horror and murders that are happening in Poland, where he was sending people off to prisoner camp and made the decision to keep it quite in order not to start chaos. David later became ill and froze to death on a train back to Dachau in February of 1945. The diary is so sad to see what David goes through, all the emotions, and trails he’s tested with throughout the Camp. The saddest part of the presentation was when Dr. Jan Van Pelt closes with a quote from David at the end of his diary when he says, “Forgive me but don’t forget.” The mindset of David and probably how guilty he felt knowing what he did while he