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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. While Filip was in the gas chamber, who did he look up to find surrounding him?

2. What did the term "selection" mean at Birkenau and other camps?

3. What piece of evidence concerning the death camp did Filip obtain for the Resistance?

4. Why were the people in the Family Camp asked to write letters to family and friends days before their extermination?

5. How did the Sonderkommando's doctor's wife try to follow him as he was being deported?

Short Essay Questions

1. In what ways did the prisoners of the Family Camp change their emotional state once inside the changing room?

2. Why did the SS decide not to shoot the first load of people from the Family Camp who were in the changing room?

3. During the execution of a mother and her child, why did Voss' underling take over for him?

4. What were the male prisoners' main motives for wanting to visit the women's camp?

5. What is ironic and sad about the scene during which there was a party for Gorges in the crematorium?

6. How did Filip and others come to realize that members of Birkenau's Sonderkommando who were taken to Lublin had been murdered?

7. When Filip was sent to Birkenau to deliver chlorinated lime, he spoke with two grammar school friends who were burning decomposing corpses. Why did the SS men come and separate them?

8. How did Voss decide to deal with the need to have the crematorium ready by 8 am the following morning for the Family Camp?

9. How did Filip feel his life had changed for the better when he was moved to Birkenau?

10. What problems did the SS men who accepted bribes organized by prisoners have?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How do the escape plans of the Resistance in the general camp prison population differ from the plans of the Sonderkommando group? What are the reasons for the two groups having differing opinions as to when they should attempt an escape? Why do they differ?

Essay Topic 2

Describe Filip's mixed feelings about being a helpless onlooker and reluctant partner in the crimes against the prisoners of Birkenau.

Give concrete examples from the book to support your descriptions.

Essay Topic 3

The SS men have a particular way of ensuring that prisoners set for extermination are not aware of what is about to happen to them.

How do the Germans achieve this ruse?

Why do the prisoners believe them?

(see the answer keys)

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