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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the author claim helped to detach prisoner's minds from their surroundings?
(a) A cold curiosity about what conditions they could survive.
(b) An intense fantasy life.
(c) A card game that they invented in their quarters that they looked forward to during the day.
(d) Intimate relationships with fellow prisoners.

2. What symptom characterizes the first mental phase of prisoners in concentration camps?
(a) Fatigue.
(b) Depression.
(c) Grief.
(d) Shock.

3. Where does the author claim that most of the extermination took place?
(a) During mass transport, on the road to the camps.
(b) In camps in northern Europe.
(c) In the big, famous camps.
(d) In small camps.

4. What were the wishes and desires of prisoners?
(a) Food and comfort.
(b) Intellectual stimulation.
(c) Most of the men wished for intimacy.
(d) The strongest desire was often for more water than was readily available.

5. Why were camp inmates frightened of decisions?
(a) They were scared of bringing attention to themselves.
(b) They believed that fate was one's master.
(c) They were frightened of everything.
(d) They worried about the consequences of excercising their own judgement.

6. What is the "delusion of reprieve"?
(a) This is when a person deludes themself into believing that the worst is over, and the best is yet to come.
(b) The idea that many psychiatric patients have, that someone else is responsible for their own well-being.
(c) The idea that a condemned person has the illusion just before death that he will be saved.
(d) When a psychiatric patient splits their own personality in two, in order to avoid dealing with trauma.

7. What characterizes the second phase of a prisoner's mental state?
(a) Apathy in the face of the horrors of camp life.
(b) Suprise at finding the beauty in camp life.
(c) Grief.
(d) Depression.

8. What did prisoners often discuss when they had a free moment?
(a) Food.
(b) Fear of death.
(c) Escape.
(d) The past.

9. How do psychiatrists expect people to react in abnormal situations?
(a) They expect mentally healthy people to have balanced reactions to such situations.
(b) They expect strong reactions.
(c) They expect an abnormal reaction according to the person's degree of normality.
(d) They expect that a normal person in an abnormal situation will demonstrate severe stress.

10. Where does the author of the book travel in a "prison car" with small peepholes?
(a) Through Germany.
(b) To Auschwitz.
(c) To Switzerland.
(d) Past his hometown.

11. What concentration camp does the author describe traveling to?
(a) Auschwitz.
(b) Dachau.
(c) Sachsenhausen.
(d) Buchenwald.

12. What position does the author volunteer for?
(a) He volunteers to work as a personal secretary so that he can work inside.
(b) He volunteers to move rocks so that he can leave the camp occasionally.
(c) He volunteers to clean up sewage so that a friend can be spared that job.
(d) He volunteers to work as a doctor.

13. What are "premium coupons"?
(a) Raffle tickets given to the SS guards to award them things previously owned by the prisoners.
(b) These were certificates from the SS guards, and were awarded to prisoners who arrived to work before the morning bell rang.
(c) These came from the construction firm that hired workers through the prison, and could be used to buy days off work.
(d) These came from the construction firm that hired the workers from the prison, and could be exchanged for cigarettes.

14. Who is this book most concerned with?
(a) The "great army of unknown and unrecorded victims."
(b) The Nazi leadership, and the way in which they made decisions regarding the fate of the concentration camps.
(c) The Capos -- "prisoners who acted as trustees, having special privileges."
(d) Hitler himself.

15. What kind of event does the author attend with the camp's chief officer?
(a) A medical presentation on Measles.
(b) A seance.
(c) A private meal.
(d) A meeting where SS officials discuss punishment.

Short Answer Questions

1. What happens in the story of Death in Teheran?

2. How does the author describe the Capos?

3. What does the author think about during difficult moments?

4. What kind of sickness affected most of the prisoners in 1945?

5. What possession does the author of this book try to keep after arriving to the concentration camp?

(see the answer keys)

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