The Boy From Buchenwald: Introduction–Chapter 3

by Robbie Waisman, Susan McClelland
Born Romek Wajsman in Poland's Skarżysko-Kamienna, an eighty-nine-year-old Canadian activist remembers how he survived the Holocaust, first as an eleven-year-old slave laborer in a German-occupied factory and later as a teenage prisoner in concentration camps.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Introduction–Chapter 3, Chapters 4–7, Chapters 8–12, Chapters 13–17, Chapter 18–Epilogue
40 words 89 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. industry
    the action of making of goods and services for sale
    Skarżysko-Kamienna, while small, was known for its industries, particularly munitions that in 1939 employed more than 4,000 of Skarżysko-Kamienna’s 19,000 people.
  2. concentration
    the spatial property of being crowded together
    The largest concentration of Jews in Poland was in Warsaw.
  3. flourish
    make steady progress
    Skarżysko-Kamienna flourished in the first few decades of the twentieth century and attracted a lot of Jewish immigrants, including Papa, who came from Russia.
  4. borscht
    a soup containing beet juice as a foundation
    To me, Skarżysko-Kamienna was forests and birdsong; winds that carried the warm, smoky aromas from our chimney; and cooking fires and the scents of our mamas’ borscht and beef briskets.
  5. haberdasher
    a merchant who sells clothing designed for men
    Papa was a haberdasher and tailor. That meant he made hats, mostly the black hats called shtreimel, a very wide-brimmed fur hat that Jewish men in Skarżysko-Kamienna would wear, but also city hats. He made suits, too.
  6. swoon
    be overwhelmed with ecstasy, especially when encountering something or someone you admire
    My two oldest brothers were also handsome, so handsome that all the girls would swoon.
  7. conservative
    resistant to change
    My Jewish community was very conservative. Even at synagogue, the women would sit in the balcony while the men would be on the main floor.
  8. challah
    (Judaism) a braided loaf of white bread containing eggs
    At their wedding, I ate and ate—challah, gefilte fish, cabbage rolls, and stewed chicken.
  9. ghetto
    the restricted quarter of European cities where Jews lived
    In 1941, my family and I were forced out of our home and moved to a Jewish Quarter, which most people call today a ghetto.
  10. slate
    designate or schedule
    So many times I was slated for death, and each time I narrowly missed the fate of so many others.
  11. munition
    weapons considered collectively
    I was a worker mostly, a slave laborer in a munitions factory making guns for the German soldiers during much of the Holocaust and then, when the war turned against the Germans, shunted in cattle cars from Poland into Germany, ending up at the Buchenwald concentration camp outside Weimar, Germany.
  12. embroider
    decorate with needlework
    Slowly, like Mama would weave fine threads to embroider her linens, I found there was another story inside me.
  13. doting
    extravagantly or foolishly loving and indulgent
    How were we able to go on, many of us to lead extraordinary lives as doctors, lawyers, spiritual leaders, professors, teachers, parents, loving husbands, and doting grandfathers?
  14. dub
    give a nickname to
    Among us there was Elie Wiesel, whose writing and activism earned him the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. He was one of us, the Buchenwald Boys, as we were dubbed by the press.
  15. furrow
    make or become wrinkled or creased
    The man’s sky-blue eyes were narrowed, his forehead furrowed, and he was pointing at me.
  16. artillery
    large but transportable armament
    My job was stamping the initials FES onto artillery shells for the Wehrmacht.
  17. chafe
    tear or wear off the skin or make sore by abrading
    For the first few months, I was working so hard, the skin on my hands chafed so much, that I bled.
  18. typhoid
    infection marked by intestinal inflammation and ulceration
    For a fortnight, I had been drifting in and out of sweats and chills from typhoid fever.
  19. kosher
    conforming to the dietary laws of Judaism
    When my fever had broken and I discovered I was still alive, I suspected one of the men in the barracks, perhaps Papa’s friend the kosher butcher, had kept me hidden under straw and given me water.
  20. akin
    similar in quality or character
    “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
    —Elie Wiesel
  21. clamor
    utter or proclaim insistently and noisily
    Everyone clamored to go because the Weimar residents often handed out food.
  22. parliament
    a legislative assembly in certain countries
    Tall Willy had been a teacher, a member of the German Communist Party, a town councilor and then member of parliament for the province of Hesse.
  23. fascist
    an adherent of right-wing authoritarian views
    The leader of the Nazi Party, Führer Adolf Hitler, was a fascist, which meant he was a dictator.
  24. communist
    a socialist in favor of collectivism in a classless society
    The Communists, Jakow told Abe and me, believed everyone was equal. The Communists were the very opposite of fascism.
  25. bearing
    (usually plural) a person's awareness of self
    I felt I was going to faint. I spun around to get my bearings, feeling like the sides of the train were moving in around me.
  26. insulation
    material reducing transmission of sound, heat or electricity
    In the wooden carriers that had no seats, no carpeting, no insulation or warmth, we were packed so tightly, we had little room to even turn around, let alone sit.
  27. chaplain
    a member of the clergy ministering to some institution
    Two of the Buchenwald Boys and Rabbi Robert Marcus, a chaplain with the American Army who was accompanying us, were talking to the Frenchmen.
  28. comprise
    include or contain
    Our train comprised the youngest boys from Buchenwald, and we all seemed to be clamoring to stick our arms out as the women distributed bottles of goat’s and cow’s milk, breadsticks, apples, and peaches.
  29. spindly
    long, thin, and often weak or fragile
    Salek was spindly, like a sapling, and those knees of his seemed to clank together when he moved.
  30. occupation
    the control of a country by forces of a foreign power
    As I ate, it became pretty clear that Salek was a know-it-all, talking with his mouth full about the various French resistance movements that helped the Allies land on the continent, liberate France from German occupation, and eventually overthrow the Nazis altogether.
  31. impose
    inflict something unpleasant
    Germany occupied France from 1940 until 1944, replacing French flags with Nazi swastikas and imposing strict rules on the press and media.
  32. resistance
    group action in opposition to those in power
    “I betcha those farmers who thought we were Nazis were resistance guerrillas,” Salek said, spitting crumbs of bread on his shirt as he spoke. “That’s where a lot of the resistance took place—the countryside—with men like them blowing up bridges, stopping those German tanks and motorcycles. Stuff like that.”
  33. fitful
    intermittently stopping and starting
    I soon fell into a fitful sleep, my rest punctured by the movement of the train as it swayed through the hips of mountains.
  34. oppressor
    a person of authority who subjects others to undue pressures
    “The ultimate victory of our oppressors is when we fight each other,” he had said. “When abuse becomes all we know, we become abusers, hating ourselves and each other.”
  35. languish
    fail to progress or succeed
    Western journalists wrote about us boys, languishing at Buchenwald weeks after liberation, most of us still sleeping in the very barracks where we’d been imprisoned, spending our days stealing from Weimar families and shops, vandalizing homes and public buildings and trying to kill one another.
  36. empathy
    understanding and entering into another's feelings
    I heard murmurs around the camp that the Westerners thought we were misfits and psychopaths, a word I didn’t know then but came to understand meant someone with antisocial behavior and a lack of empathy.
  37. manipulative
    skillful in influencing others to one's own advantage
    Some journalists even wrote that we Buchenwald Boys had to be mean-spirited, tough, and unruly, aggressive and manipulative to have survived when so many others didn’t.
  38. collude
    act in unison and in secret towards a deceitful purpose
    When trains arrived, he and this large Ukrainian Communist named Otto would encourage new arrivals to identify those who had been mean in the ghettos or colluded with the Nazis.
  39. deprived
    marked by a state of extreme poverty
    Chaim had told me he had to survive on very little food, in cold conditions, finding ways to keep his mind alert in very deprived circumstances, to fight his enemies.
  40. throng
    a large gathering of people
    As I pushed through the throng of people, the flashes of camera bulbs blinding me, the French thrust candies into my hands and bouquets of gardenias and daisies into my arms.
Created on Mon Dec 11 11:39:16 EST 2023 (updated Tue Dec 12 12:28:21 EST 2023)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.