...The Belief and Denial of the Holocaust Between 1933 and 1945, an event took place that would greatly affect the world forever. Jews, homosexuals, and even Jehovah’s Witnesses were stripped of their rights, mistreated continuously, and forced to complete hard manual labor. This horrendous event led by Adolf Hitler is known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust was an event in which “Jews were separated from their communities and persecuted; and finally they were treated as less than human beings and murdered” (What Was The Holocaust?). Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany and the soldiers who were set out to annihilate anyone who did not follow social normalities. Even though there are various pictures and documents in existence showing proof...
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...In reference to his experience during the Holocaust and why he wrote night, author Elie Wiesel says without the experience he would have not become "… A witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory" (Wiesel ). The Holocaust is a memorable event that occurred in Germany and Eastern Europe in 1933 threw 1945. This tragedy was runned by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, killing a massive amount of Jews, homosexuals, Catholics, poles, and gypsies. Hitler strongly believed that the Jews were responsible for economic struggles also known as the great depression. Many people also believed they were to blame for the loss of war. In the...
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... Research Paper 1 The Holocaust In this paper, I will be presenting many facts that show what the Holocaust is and why it occurred. The Holocaust was an organized, persecution, and murder of approximately six million Jewish people including 1.5 million Jewish children. The Holocaust took place in Europe by the Nazi regime and its collaborators that happened between 1933-1945. During that time, Jews were known as an inferior race. They were thought to be a threat to the German community. After years of having the Nazis rule in Germany, Hitler decided his “final solution”. This solution included mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of Poland. In the article “Elie Wiesel Biography” by The Biography.com, the author’s main thesis is that the Holocaust was a very traumatic event that caused an eye-opener for humans about how cruel humans can be. This article talks about Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor who is now a Nobel-Prize winning writer, teacher and activist known for the memoir Night. In his books he discusses his experiences of surviving the Holocaust. At the age of 15, Wiesel and his entire family were sent to Auschwitz as part of the Holocaust (Eliezer Wiesel, 2014). Elie and his father were separated from his mother and younger sister and taken to...
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...Rhetorical Analysis of The Perils of Indifference by Elie Wiesel As part of the Millennium Lecture Series hosted by the White House, notable author, Noble Peace Prize Winner, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel delivered the speech The Perils of Indifference on April 12, 1999. He delivered this speech in order to inspire the American people to take action in times of human suffering, injustice, and violence, in order to prevent events like the Holocaust from happening again in the future. Through the use of the modes of persuasion, his rhetorical situation, and word choice, Wiesel successfully appeals to his audience of President Clinton and his wife, the members of Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, his “excellencies” and the rest of the American public. Wiesel’s main point in his speech is that of indifference and what can come about because of it. In order to successfully define indifference to the audience and persuade them to never be indifferent in the future, Wiesel defines its etymology, as “no difference” and uses numerous comparisons on what may cause indifference, as “a strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur” in circumstances like light and dark and good and evil. To prove that indifference is both a sin and a punishment, Wiesel appeals to logos and ethos, stating that he is aware of how tempting it may be to be indifferent and that it can be easier to avoid something rather than take action against it. He believes that indifference benefits the aggressor...
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...assassinated? The historical background of Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, has experienced such a significant event. Wiesel is an Auschwitz survivor and his memoir, Night, reflects the society and the beliefs of its time. A controversy about this work is that some people believe the Holocaust never happened and as a result regard the book as false. However, this novel was important at the time it was written, because it was a time when people didn‘t believe in the Holocaust. In addition, Elie Wiesel’s background is essential to the Holocaust’s memory, because it deals with the Nazi’s genocide. The author of Night, who is also the protagonist of the book, shows how delusion and rumors spread false hopes and lies throughout the camp. The author also showed how Hitler’s belief that other races were inferior and didn’t deserve to live led to Hitler’ rise to power. Wiesel’s story is crucial to that time-period since it shows his perseverance through multiple concentration camps and the loss of close family members....
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...“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” (Wiesel) This is one of the many wise things that Eliezer Wiesel (a Holocaust survivor) has said. He was and is a great part of our american history reminding us how amazing our lives are over here.The holocaust shaped him and everyone else. Eliezer Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighetu Marmatiei. He did not have the pleasure of attending school as a child like many of us do. His dad’s name was Shlomo Wiesel and his mother’s name was Sarah Feig. He like most people had siblings but he was the only boy out of four children. His older sisters names were Beatrice Wiesel and Hilda Wiesel. His younger sister was named Tzipora Wiesel (Rabinovitch and Martin). Elie Wiesel went to...
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...In the Holocaust during WWII, victims were taken from their homes, separated from their loved ones and shipped off by train, to concentration camps. They were told that work would lead them to freedom. They were often starved and beaten. If one was too weak to work efficiently or at all, he was killed. On the Bottom by Primo Levi, The War by Marguerite Davis and Never Shall I Forget By Elie Wiesel, are texts written by survivors of the Holocaust. They work together to express the brutality and dehumanization that took place, along with the idea that human nature led victims to lose faith in their belief systems, governments and even the desire to live… Even after the day of liberation. It takes extreme circumstances for people to hit sincere ‘rock bottom.’ The Holocaust accomplished this with ease, the first night for some prisoners. Levi is trying to convey how mortifying and dehumanizing the Holocaust...
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...Psychological Effects of the Holocaust In February of 1933, the Nazi Party ruthlessly started to persecute Jews simply because they were Jews. Under the Nazi Party, Jews were "worthless", and considered "animals". As time went on in the Holocaust, the physiological impact of the Nazi hatred demoralized the Jews. Jews were shot as target practice, starved (mostly to death), and forced to kill their own kind to save themselves; it was just about one's own survival- no one else mattered. Family and love soon became words that people no longer understood. In anyone’s life, it is important to have a strong family and the bond of love, but in the Holocaust, Jews were stripped away from the aspect of love and family. Many the Holocaust survivors can still recall horrendous memory's of their experience in the concentration camps. When people were in the concentration camps, the trauma was much worse; people were not mentally and emotionally strong to enough to endure the pain that it caused. In the Holocaust the Nazi Party caused psychological pain of the Jewish people to ensure their complete dominance. The psychological impact was so great that the Jewish people in the time and thereafter were scarred for life. At the time of the Holocaust, the Nazi Party used mental and physical psychology to undermine the Jewish people. When Jews were transferred into concentration camps like Auschwitz, other Jews already there were placed in charge of them. When they arrived, SS...
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..."Men to the left! Women to the right!" (page 27). At the time of WWII, the Holocaust involves the mass murder of millions of Jews. During this dark time, Jews are forced to work at harsh concentration camps and his chance of surviving the camps is very small. Elie Wiesel lives to tell his horrifying experiences during this time, meanwhile his faith, mankind, and his responsibility to his father struggles to thrive. As time goes on during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel witnesses more human beings diminishing by the day. This causes a mental pain, but he soon realizes that the death of humans is normal and it doesn’t affect him anymore. The death of the Pipel brings down Elie’s hope of survival. According to Elie, God doesn’t even exist anymore because the gruesome events that occur are only imaginable by him and other survivors. "I did not deny God's existence, but I doubted His absolute justice" (page 42).Without God, Elie loses hope and faith to survive and struggles to keep his father alive. For instance, he almost loses his father in the train, but manages to wake his father up by slapping him. On the other hand, a boy beats up his own father for a small ration of bread. These events inspire Elie to not give up hope. Unfortunately, his father dies near the end of the text. It is the only thing that touches Elie’s heart. "After my father's death, nothing could touch me anymore." (page 107). Futhermore, Elie faces many external conflicts. Hunger, thirst, physical pain, sickness are...
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...During the Holocaust, over 6,000,000 people were killed; most of them were Jews. “Night” by Elie Wiesel explains Elie’s point of view throughout the Holocaust. It begins with everything being normal in Sighet, Transylvania, and shifts to his hardships in three concentration camps, the first of which is Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor who grew up to write over forty-five books. He even won the Nobel Peace Prize for his book “Night.” In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, was effected by the events in the book by losing his faith in God, affecting him psychologically, and by losing faith in humanity. To start off, Elie Wiesel gradually lost his faith in God throughout “Night”. At the beginning of the book, he was studying the Zohar with Moishe the Beadle. During that time, he writes, “Thus began my initiation. Together we would read, over and over again, the same page of the Zohar… And in the...
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...Elie Wiesel Elie Wiesel is one of many survivors of the Holocaust, he once said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference, the opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference, the opposite of faith is not Hersey, it’s indifference. Elie Wiesel said this quote in order total people that others don’t have to be like you. Others can be different and that is ok. The quote that Elie Wiesel said means is that if someone is different do not pick on them. Do not hurt their feelings; help them get through the hard times. Would you want to make someone feel bad because there different, being different is better. It is ok to be different than everybody else. It means that you stand out from the crowd, and that’s ok. I feel that Elie...
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...19 March 2012 Life during the Holocaust: Life in the ghettos, Dr. Mengele’s medical care, and food in the camps Genocide during WWII was unbelievably cruel and awful. The Holocaust was sure to be remembered from this time period and have permanently engraved horrible memories into those who survived. During the Holocaust many victims suffered while living in the ghettos, soon to reach the camps they also suffered there as well. The encounters with Dr. Mengele were unbearable too. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night is very important especially the fact that it accurately describes what really happened during the Holocaust. One of these many reasons is that Wiesel was an actual survivor of the Holocaust. His descriptions of his experiences in the ghettos, encounters with Dr. Mengele and his trouble with small amounts of food in the camp greatly make us only able to imagine what he went through. Elie Wiesel in his memoir Night, along with other victims of the Holocaust was faced with many obstacles while living in the ghettos, encounters with Dr. Mengele and forced labor. Living in the ghettos was the first step in being dehumanized. Elie Wiesel describes these experiences in his memoir Night. One example of these experiences that were described by Elie was that decrees were to be made in the Jewish ghettos. “We were no longer allowed to go into restaurants or cafes, attend the synagogue and must be in at sic o’ clock.”(Wiesel 9). These are for the Jews in the ghettos prior to full...
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...lesson is learned? Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel speaks of the importance of sharing his story and others alike to demonstrate to people an event in which he and millions of others lost so much to never happen again. Wiesel speaks of “those moments that murdered [his] God” as he pushes to survive and realizes he will no longer be the same boy as before but a man willing to persevere through the camps without religion to guide him and emphasizes the loss he feels in the camps (Wiesel 34). As Elie Wiesel documents his experience of the Holocaust in his memoir Night, he uses rhetorical questions to demonstrate how the belief in God is challenged, and ultimately lost, during times of tremendous suffering. At the arrival of the first camp,...
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...eradicate Jewish memory, then it is our duty to remember the Jewish lives that perished and to keep Jewish memory alive. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, explains in his preface his reasons for writing the latest edition of his memoir Night: “[I] believe that [I] have a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.” The number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling. It is imperative that we remember their stories in order to give meaning to their survival. As Wiesel writes, “[The survivor] has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory.” Wiesel has painstakingly endowed us, the next generation, with the knowledge of the moral depravity during the Holocaust as well as the importance of remembrance. Now it is up to us to apply this knowledge and to fight against future genocides. As a Jewish teenager growing up in the United States, I believe that it is essential for our generation to remember not only the Holocaust, but also the debacle of our country’s lack of support for the Jewish community in its most crucial time of need. In his book, Abandonment of the Jews, David Wyman asserts that: “The United States was willing to attempt almost nothing to save the Jews” (5). Indeed, the United States government had been cognizant of the Holocaust since 1939, but took no action. Quite to the contrary, it set strict Jewish immigration quotas, accepting only 21,000...
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...The Continuing Effect of the Holocaust The Holocaust impacted the whole world. The Holocaust took place before and also during WWII, from 1933 until 1946. Many facts about the Holocaust are still unknown. Did the main population know about the mass murderers in the camps, the overpopulated ghettos, or how this devastating event would impact the survivors of the Holocaust? The Holocaust affected civilians during the Holocaust, and also survivors who can share their anecdote to people today. Firstly, there were people during this time of the Holocaust who were not aware of the mass murderers in the camps. The Nazis actually tried to keep it a secret by fooling the public with propaganda. This propaganda sent a deceiving message about the Nazis...
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