名人教你讲英文：At concentration camps 集中营的日子

名人教英文：At concentration camps 集中营的日子

The eight from the secret annex and their helpers were questioned. Finally, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested with those who had been hiding. The ten prisoners were loaded into a windowless police truck. They were driven from 263 Prinsengracht to a former school now used by the Nazis.

The eight spent the night in basement cells. The following day, they were all taken to a regular prison on the Weteringschans in the centre of the city. For ten days, Anne and the others lived in crowded, filthy (肮脏的) conditions. Witnesses who noticed the Franks described a very worried Otto Frank and his nervous wife.

The next stop was Westerbork, eighty miles from Amsterdam. The Franks travelled on a regular train but the doors were bolted shut. Otto Frank still had hope. Perhaps, he thought, he and his family would remain at Westerbork. Maybe they would not be deported to the death camps in Poland. The Franks were registered at the camp. They all showed quiet dignity. The Franks were assigned to the punishment block. There they were forced to wear uniforms and clogs (木屐). Because they had not turned themselves in and had to be captured in hiding, they were treated worse. Otto Frank had his head shaved. Edith and the girls had their hair cut painfully short. At the punishment block, there was less food, and the work was harder.

Otto Frank was assigned to the battery shed where old batteries were chopped up. It was difficult, dirty work. Anne's father tried to save Anne from this work. He got her a job helping another woman cleaning toilets. The men and women slept in different barracks (营房). But once, when Anne was sick, her father came to stand beside her bed for hours telling her stories.

Anne and Margot clung together during their time at Westerbork. Everybody hoped against hope that they would not be deported to the death camps. But on 2 September 1944, the names were announced for the next deportation. The Franks, the Van Pelses, and Pfeffer were included.

For three days and two nights, the train from Westerbork traveled through the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland. The people were held in cattle cars with no ventilation (通风) except what might slip through a crack in the wood. There were no sanitary (卫生) facilities. Some died on the terrible journey. The smell of human waste and death was almost unbearable. The trains were hot, and they rocked violently in the wind. Anne and her family were jammed in with sixty people. Finally, the train stopped. The half-dead people stumbled out and were beaten by SS men who stood guard along the tracks. Anne Frank and her family had arrived at Auschwitz, twenty-five square miles of gas chambers (毒气室), crematoriums (火葬场) , and horror.

Immediately, the men and women were separated. Those to be gassed at once were selected. Anyone over fifty or under fifteen would be gassed along with the sick and disabled. The others were to be put to work. Otto Frank turned and looked at his wife and daughters for the last time on the night of 5 September 1944. Although Otto Frank was fifty-five, he looked younger. For that reason, he was not killed immediately.

The women chosen for the work chores had to walk to the women's camp at Birkenau. Edith Frank and her two daughters stayed together. In October 1944 Edith Frank stayed at Birkenau. But Anne and Margot were sent to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. It was bitterly cold. The women there were starving and getting sick with deadly diseases.