This piece was very cold and disturbing. At first, I did not know what the author meant when he was describing Canada but after further reading I found its definition: The name given to the camp stores (as well as prisoners working there) where valuables and clothing taken from prisoners were sorted for dispatch to Germany. Like the nation of Canada, the store symbolized wealth and prosperity to the camp inmates. This where the narrator worked. He was overwhelmed by the car bringing in thousands of people to be striped of their things. Dead babies lay unclaimed in the car. Corpses are dragged out and thrown into the trucks to be cremated. The people think that "they are beginning a new life in the camp and they prepare themselves psychologically for a hard struggle for existence" (2786) but little do they know that they are destined to die immediately.
I found it interesting that the author had been in an extermination camp himself. It made more sense that the story would be so brutally descriptive and almost emotionless when describing the painful scenes of death and misery.
This disgustingly descriptive tale of "extermination" really bothered me. I am not sure that I would be able to live with myself if I was forced to work at one of these camps. I think I might be willing to joined these people going to their immediate death after built up hopes in a train car. I have been in a gas chamber, albeit for military training, and I have a little bit to go off of and realize what this must have been like. But to be a person who was alive only to serve the Germans and watch fellow countrymen pass through this camp to meet their maker, it turns the stomach.
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