i know they were essentially there to perish, individually and as a people, but did what did the day look like? im german (sort of, my parents migrated here so i have somewhat ambivalent feelings about my germanness, i mean i dont feel like the AFD is rooting for "germans" like me haha) so ive seen the documentaries depicting them and i mean, yeah, you all know how that felt. but were there moments of humanity? children plaing with toys, loved ones having sex? songs being sung? i know i sound super duper noeliberal and white asking this, looking for good in the pure evil, but ive been thinking about life and how we create meaning and moments of connection and so forth and was wondering if there was something like that in like auschwitz.
i am not trying to romanticise or in any way disrespect the horror of what the holocaust as a doing of humanity was and concentration camps were the executioners of.
And a second qeustion: did the jews hear stories about the camps? did they believe them? how did they explain what happened to fellow jews disappearing in the night?
Boatload of questions, but you guys usually give really good answes, i wanna try my luck :)
First to answer your second question, many Jews did hear rumors about death camps. Some knew what was coming when they were deported, some did not, some had heard and refused to believe it. Its also important to remember that much of the Holocaust was done not in death camps, but by mass shootings. In this case there could sometimes be very little warning. At other times people knew exactly what was coming. It really depended on time and place.
These moments of humanity, would have been more common in ghettos. In the Warsaw Ghetto for example people attempted to continue to practice Judaism, to educate their children, some even got married during the early years. Even when from the future it seems like death was inevitable, in most ghettos people fought back by having hope, as sad and useless as that may seem now. Community in this way did not for the most part exist in death camps. Again its important to remember that other than Auschwitz-Birkenau, death camps did not have a large prisoner population, and most people were killed within hours of arrival. However there are some important exceptions. The 600 workers in Sobibor were able to have some communal life and they used that communal life to stage a revolt which ended in the camp being destroyed, though only 50 prisoners survived. In Auschwitz-Birkenau female prisoners in particular would form "family" groups, and did care for each other. On arrival in Auschwitz, males were more likely to survive because they were seen as workers. However once chosen for work, women were more likely to survive long term, possibly because they did form these bonds that gave them hope.
I am a Jewish graduate student in Holocaust studies, and would be happy to discuss this further with you, and provide book recommendations, but I don't want to make my answer too long.
Some reccomendations to start
Night by Eli Wiesel
None of Us Will Return by Charlotte Delbo
The Death of the Shtetl by Yehuda Bauer
War and Genocide by Doris Bergan
Origins of the Final Solution by Christopher Browning