Slavomir Rawicz: Helpful Or Harmful?

Keeping a solid mindset at all times is important, but actions are what define a person. Staying alive during hard and dangerous times may be very difficult, but it is important to do. Slavomir Rawicz had to scale mountains with no gear after traveling for weeks through a desert on his journey. “So we went on and on, painfully, like flies struggling through a path of treacle. We made long traverses to right and left to avoid the impossible extra exertion for a final assault” (Rawicz 255). Rawicz likens his group to flies moving slowly because his group never stops. They know if they stop, they die. “They were tortured, starved, and forced to work as slave laborers… Elie barely survived” (Dakers 9). These groups went through terrible hardships
The longer one endures a hardship that constantly threatens their life the more difficult it is for them to continue. Rawicz and his group not only scaled a mountain as starved men with no gear, they did it during the bitter winter. “We found it difficult to hear one another. Irritation piled on irritation. We were deadly tired, morose, always hungry. My nerves were strung up like piano strings. It was too cold to sleep. About the beginning of March, the five of us walked out of a snow-flurry” (Rawicz 248). Rawicz’s human drive to survive outweighs the terrible conditions and weather affecting him. “The prisoners often had no food or water. For most, the journey lasted for several days. The stench, the hunger and thirst, and the fear were overwhelming” (Fitzgerald 40). Staying alive in these horrid conditions was very difficult. However, the people who survived through these did so with careful, tremendous actions. It is important but difficult to stay alive during hard and dangerous
The human drive can be inspired by one thinking about their actions and how those actions will affect their future. Many times in Rawicz’s journey the only thought going through his mind was needing food or, more often, water. “Lifeless and naked the rocky ridge sloped easily into the distance above us. In my mind was the one thought that over the hump there might be water. We rested a couple of hours before we tackled the drag upwards” (Rawicz 206). The thought of having drinking water in the future inspired Rawicz to continue nearly by itself. “As news of the program spread, survivors realized that they no longer had a home in Poland. Many survivors hoped to immigrate to Palestine, which they considered their homeland” (Fitzgerald 55). Both parties knew they had to do difficult things to survive. Their actions led to their survival and that was their reason for them. Sometimes people struggling to live simply wish to give up. Slavomir Rawicz, however, refused to die. He wished to see freedom too much to give up. “I struggled against a panicky impulse to urge a return the way we had come, back to the water and green things and life. I fought it down” (Rawicz 178). Rawicz knew he had a good future if he didn’t give up - a future of freedom. “He considered giving up and letting himself die at the side of the road… ‘I had no right to let myself die. What