...Many people don’t know about the Holocaust or only know that it happened during the time of WW II. The Holocaust was the mass massacre of 6 million Jews and other minorities in Europe by the Nazi regime(Holocaust Encyclopedia). Some people might not want their kids to be taught this in 8th grade because they believe that their children’s minds will be polluted by thoughts of killing and extended torture(Wisconsin Department of Education). Students in 8th grade should definitely be taught about the Holocaust because it is necessary to teach them to learn from history, never judge anyone by their race, and finally explain to them that being silent towards other suffering can lead to mass destruction. These type of ideas can create confusion...
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...The worst manslaughter in history, forgotten? Relieved? Forgiven? Human minds in need of such remembrance of something that accepted such a crime to wipe out an entire race? Elie Wiesel’s Night not only reminds us of the unforgivable crimes that Hitler committed, but helps us with the further understanding of the differences in human nature by culture/religion. This experience dramatically changed Elie from a dreamer and believer to someone who has no faith and lives to only eat and sleep. The death of his father would haunt him, only for Elie to find out when his dad dies, he wouldn’t care anymore. The Holocaust changed many people immensely and shot a hole in the heart of history. Before Elie was plucked into the worst manslaughter in the...
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...The Forgotten Holocaust The majority of the population when asked the question, “Could a genocide on the scale of the holocaust take place without the world acknowledging it?” The common answer would be that a killing of that size would be impossible to hide; but for the Japanese it was not. The crimes of mass murder and human experimentation committed by the Japanese Imperial army were horrendous; with a death toll comparable to the Holocaust, along with the unimaginable crimes committed by the notorious Unit 731, this was one of the most undocumented genocides in history. History of the Japanese Imperial Army Between the years of 1867-1945 the Japanese Imperial Army grew to an enormous size of around six million troops (Rummel). An army of this size had never been organized, which is why the entire continent of Asia feared that the Japanese would have the power to take over Asia. In previous genocides, the groups committing the killings...
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...Death Penalty: Terminating the Death Penalty in the United States The Unites States of America is one of the few remaining countries to keep intact the most severe of criminal sanctions, the death penalty, even though it has not been proven to be effective, but rather the opposite. It is a truism. Their are many and more reasons to why this drastic criminal sanction should be abolished. Under definition of law, execution is premeditated murder in the first degree. The death penalty is unjust and we, the people, should have moved past our ancestors barbaric ways. To create a peaceful and just world even for the worst that humanity may offer. This criminal sanction also has a cost, in more ways then one. It is very expensive to preform physically but also has the ability to take a mental toll to those involved, it’s a costly situation. The worst of situations is those convicted and put of death row, only later to be found innocent of all charges. The lucky ones proved innocent before their scheduled execution but some are not half as lucky until they have reached their after life. The overall cost of executions have different ways to take a toll on someone. It’s the financial cost of carrying out the death penalty. The cost of an execution is much higher then the cost of life in prison. If sentenced to death, their are many financial costs that need be taken care of such as the lawyers, the medications for the actual execution, the trials to be tried, etc. Since 1978, in...
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...Primo Levi (1986), a Holocaust survivor and author of multiple works, says “Judges know this very well: almost never do two eyewitnesses of the same event describe it in the same way and with the same words, even if the event is recent and if neither of them has a personal interest in distorting it” (p.1) After viewing different testimonies it is evident that recollection of an event is adapted due to various factors such as: personal experiences, age, gender, bias, and more. This is why testimony is so valuable because it provides viewers with the ability to relate in some ways to survivors, it reiterates historical events during the Holocaust combating deniers, feels in the less researched components, and it gives the opportunity to study psychological aspects. By analyzing the dialogue, tone, and body language of each survivor much more about a survivors disposition can be revealed. While watching Aviva Blumberg’s testimony two themes were highlighted that Primo Levi has also...
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...Everyday a child dies from hunger. Everyday refugees wander the streets, unable to find a place willing to take them in. Everyday someone suffers at the hand of government plots. Everyday inexplicable, (sad) events take place. And yet, these events continue to take place because we turn a blind eye, or because we refuse to offer help to those who need it. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel speaks for these people in his speech “The Perils of Indifference”. With his somber, controlled tone, Elie addresses government officials and friends and everyone in between, claiming that indifference to the plights of others is an inhuman act. Through the use of sarcasm, Elie displays the true affects of indifference. He states, “ Of course, indifference can...
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...From 1937 to 1941, around 6 million Jews were killed under the control of a man named Adolf Hitler. Hundreds of thousands were displaced for years, with no home to go to. In the memoir Night by Elie Weisel, hatred and discrimination are shown throughout the years. Weisel makes a strong and understandable point: the world is full of apathy. The article "Follow the Crowd" by ABC News dives deeper into this, with research from Dr. Gregory Berns. Apathy is very clear in the world, and it perpetrates injustice because it causes people to turn a blind eye to worldly problems and simply do not want to help because of other people's opinions. While people think they are helping by staying silent, it does more harm than good. Unfortunately, in today's...
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...of Kurt Weill’s and Ogden Nash’s Speak Low, a glue that keeps the whole cohesive. Early on, Petzold carefully and subtly plants seemingly insignificant details, only to later return and reveal their importance: a divorce date on an index card that makes a brief appearance at the beginning turns out to carry a much bigger weight later on. The film owes as much to its writer-director’s storytelling talent as to Nina Hoss’ powerhouse performance. Hoss, who seems to barely move an eyebrow, channels a dizzying array of emotions through her eyes. She is the perfect Nelly. At its core, the story raises one essential question: how do you pick up the pieces and move on after such trauma? For Nelly, the way forward is to go back to Germany and cling to what once was. For Lene, the way forward is a fresh start in Tel Aviv. Phoenix is thus not only about one individual’s search for identity but also about the conflicting coping strategies of Holocaust...
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...I believe that the story “Night” shows us a multitude of angles on which people lived during the holocaust. Though I do not belive that in these times that human kindness prevailed, often prisoners would kill for food or drink, and many people turned a blind eye to the actions in Germany. The history of the world is plagued by mankind’s inability to settle for what they have and who they are. Wars have been fought over religion, tradition, territory, and in this case, the idea that one race is superior to another. World War II was a horrible time in the world. The First World War was “the war to end all wars” and yet chaos spread over Europe. Elie Wiesel’s story, Night, is no exception. Elie was a Jewish prisoner who escaped the Nazi death camps. Night redefines what a common theme of man’s inhumanity to man. This theme is shown through the murder of a young boy, Elie’s belief in God, and Elie’s self-worth. The first display of Nazi inhumanity is the murder of a young child. An man and the boy (his assistant) were accused of blowing up a power plant on the camp. The man and boy were tortured and questioned and refused to give any information about the incident to the Nazi soldiers. The boy was described as “having the face of a sad angel” and was sentenced to be hanged. Everyone at the camp liked him and the SS officer in charge of the hanging refused his job and was replaced. The child was so light he hung for half and hour before actually...
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...Does Irene Zisblatt play a major role in what we call history? Irene Zisblatt, an innocent thirteen year old at the time who was involved in the terrible things that took place during the Holocaust. For example, Irene was used to be experimented on by Dr. Josef Mengele. She was immediately separated from her family when she was being transported to a death camp located in Auschwitz. However, through hope, faith, and courage, Irene was one of very few people who managed to escape. When Irene was just nine years old she had discovered that jewish kids were no longer allowed to participate in public schools. After they find this out her mother then began to homeschool her. The nazis had went into Irene’s home and forced them to...
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...A Look at the Holocoust One might not view Adolf Hitler as a great leader because of his horrific attempt to exterminate the Jewish race, but in fact, his ability to draw an entire nation together to systematically murder six million Jews between the years of 1933 and 1945 would indicate otherwise. Looking throughout history, massive moral inversions have occurred underneath the watchful eye of otherwise “moral” beings. If we find ourselves believing that this type of event could never happen again, we would need only to look at the many massacres that have occurred since and are taking place now to realize that we are all capable of performing evil tasks. And, if not capable of “pulling the trigger” per se, our inaction and indifference is the timid man’s evil. Evil is consistent in its nature and will always find an outlet as is good. The difference in the two is merely the outcome; the steps to achieve such a feat are the same. Human beings can be taught to do nearly any task, no matter how sinister, as long as a certain level of tolerance is reached. Tolerance is reached through a variety of methods namely by the diffusion of personal responsibility, group identification and legitimacy. The Milgram Experiment shows ever so clearly how capable the human mind is to quickly become evil when given the opportunity to transfer accountability. In this experiment, a normally “good” individual became willing to transmit an electrical shock to a complete stranger simply because...
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...The 20th century brought many events that would shock the world and forever stain american soil. Events such as The Great Depression, an event that resulted in many american families losing their homes, jobs, and even in some cases their dignity. Apollo 11, the first ever spaceflight that safely landed a human on the moon and the Holocaust where an estimated six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime. Out of the hundreds of events that have occupied the length of the 20th century, none were more important as the evolution of police brutality and the civil rights movement. Who do you call when the police murder? A question probably asked by million of Americans in today's day and age. As time goes on it seems as if police brutality...
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...Some people underestimate the fact that more than six million Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust. Why were they killed? That would be because a mad man named Adolf Hitler blamed all of the Jews for the fall of Germany during World War I. With this idea, he won the election of 1933 and sought to exterminate all of the existing Jewish people. According to an article written by Michal on the National World War II Museum website, Hitler triggered World War II by invading Poland on September 1, 1939. Soon after that, he began the annihilation of the Jewish people in 1941. At this time, the world realized Hitler was a dangerous man, and he needed to be stopped. Throughout World War II, the Jewish people were lost. Many countries did not...
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...It is a nightmarish world no one should be forced to experience. However, such a world can exist when inhumanity is allowed to grow. The memoir Night also demonstrates how one can simply turn a blind eye towards obvious inhumanity, and follow orders madly without question. In all this chaos and panic how did Elie Wiesel manage to keep up? With every odd stacked against him even his own father pleading for death, even when every possible outcome lead to his demise, Wiesel stayed alive he fought and he beat the holocaust. Possibly, the inhumanity gave something to Wiesel, it gave him the will to...
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...and Prison Study by Philip Zimbardo. It explains ordinary men can be cajoled to become violent without natural tendency of obedience and it will awaken their psychological tendency of violence. However, he also believes the nature of these oridinary men is still kind by their disgusting reactions when they just join the execuation. The second article talks about Hitler’s Willing Executioners. It aimed to eliminate the standard idea of the identity of German and Holocaust. However when it involved to the Jews, the average German people were not able to think morally. As the author says “’ordinary Germans’ were animated by antisemitism, by a particular type of antisemtism that led them to conclude that the Jews out to die”(pg. 92) and “ordinary Germans deemed the killing of Jews to be a beneficent act of humanity”(pg.102). The Hitler’s Willing Executioners includes three mechanisms: mass shooting in police battalions, slave labor camps, and the...
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