During the Holocaust it was customary for the Nazis to kill off the weak, young and sickly first and allow the older, stronger Jews to live and work slave labor. The exact procedures weren’t known to those newly imprisoned… but when Ottla Kafka, sister of famed author Franz Kafka, arrived in Auschwitz, she was selected in a “work group”. A nearby group of orphaned children were set aside to and seperated from the adult prisoners…

Ottla, a strong woman, couldn’t stand to see the children crying so she insisted on joining them — the Nazi officer in charge of the selection process allowed her to join the frightened young ones. The children, with Ottla in tow, were brought straight to the gas chambers. She died with them, the very same day. Did she know where she was going, did she have any notion of what was to come? Part of me thinks she did. She wasn’t a stupid woman. There were stories being told, there were whispers. And I doubt a man as clever as Franz Kafka himself would have a sister unaware of the darkness of this world.

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