The story of your life was your own

"In fact , reading the accounts of those who survived both , one is struck more by the differences between the victims’ experiences than by the differences between the two camp systems. Each tale has its own unique qualities, each camp held different sorts of horrors for people of different characters. In Germany you could die of cruelty , in Russia you could die of despair . In Auschwitz you could die in a gas chamber , in Kolyma you could freeze to death in the snow . You could die in a German forest or a Siberian waste-land, you could die in a mining accident or you could die in a cattle train . But in the end, the story of your life was your own."