...The Holocaust was a horrendous event where the Jewish population was persecuted and believed to be inferior to all others by Germany. Many events throughout history are identified with a race or denomination being persecuted based on their beliefs; the Japanese-American Relocation was indistinguishable from the Holocaust however, a few key events make them unique. The Holocaust was one of the most horrifying acts in history as, at the occurrence of the event “as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day”(The Holocaust). Furthermore, Hitler was leading this mass genocide with debatable ideas that helped little with the situation, believing that the Jewish population was an enemy of his people, a threat. These ideas transpired during World War II, but supposedly dispersed after combat ended in 1945 when Germany surrendered and Hitler lost his life. Yet, once the Pearl Harbor was bombed a similar event occurred....
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...Mike Jones History 122 Holocaust Paper To what extent was the holocaust a European Event? There is much evidence leading scholars to ascertain that the Holocaust was indeed a European Event and not just the misdeeds of a lost leader. It is hard to point a finger at any one individual, let alone a single country, and be content in saying that all the blame for the events that occurred during the Holocaust rests with a single vessel. In “Hitler’s European Holocaust Helpers” we immediately realize that there was much collusion amongst neighboring nations in promoting the agenda set forth by the Nazi Party. A myriad of nations had blood on their hands at the end of the war. How much blame can be attributed to the aiding parties is up for speculation. Many people might assume that the events that took place across Europe, to the Jewish people, can be solely attributed to German soldiers, Nazi’s, and secret police. If that were indeed true Nazi Germany would have been the utopian model for political organization and discipline. But this was not the case and many of the Jews who were persecuted were thrown at the feet of Germany by their own nation. Many nations such as Ukraine, France, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Lithuania, Poland, Denmark and Netherlands, all played integral roles in greasing the wheels of the Genocide Machine that the Nazi regime was whole heartedly pushing forth. The readings we examined show clear evidence that each nation played their part to the tee...
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...Although the Holocaust took place almost half a century ago, it still leaves behind profound repercussions not only on its direct survivors, but also on their descendants – the second generation. In her book The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust, Marianne Hirsch coins the term “postmemory” to describe how parents can pass on their traumatic memories to their children, and how these memories consequently become an integral part of their lives and their identities. Indeed, biographies and psychoanalytical research have proven that many descendants of Holocaust survivors display psychological symptoms similar to those of their parents, despite the fact that they were born many years after the Holocaust. Although many critics insist that postmemory does not qualify as actual memory because the children have not lived through the Holocaust themselves, postmemory is indeed a legitimate form of memory. Furthermore, when compared to memory, postmemory is equally traumatizing and painful. Although postmemory is a frequent theme in many works from and on the second generation, its validity is still debated. Hirsch first defines the term as the relationship between the second generation and the memories they inherit from their parents by means of stories, images and behaviors among which they grew up. Karein Goertz, in her essay “Transgenerational Representations of the Holocaust: From Memory to ‘Post-Memory’” also describes postmemory as “a hybrid...
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...about the memory of the Holocaust than about the Holocaust itself During World War II, France woefully surrendered itself to the Nazi Regime. This new government, led by Henri-Philippe Pétain, was soon to implement Hitler’s anti-Semitic laws and, consequently, France became involved in an event recognised worldwide as the ‘systematic mass murder of European Jewry by the Nazis’ – the Holocaust. Following the end of the war, Charles de Gaulle hastily recovered France’s collective identity and repressed the reality of the nation’s collaboration out of shame. The result? A ‘crisis of consciousness’, in which French society was incapable of facing its shared responsibility. Resnais’s documentary, Nuit et brouillard, offered an even plane, where France was able to recover its memory of the Holocaust. In the forthcoming discussion, there will be detailed consideration as to whether the memory of said genocide is the fundamental theme of Nuit et brouillard, with close reference to the film’s imagery, text, and musical composition. Shot in 1955, ten years following the camp’s liberation, Resnais’s film begins with post-war colour images of Auschwitz, capturing what remains of the barren land. As the camera progressively moves through the barbed wire fence, the present day moment is established and one sees ‘une drôle d’herbe’ surrounding the edges. The inclusion of overgrown flora can be argued as a metaphor for the surface and deep memories of the Holocaust; the camps are undoubtedly...
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...During the Holocaust, millions of Jews, gypsies, and members of other groups were persecuted and murdered by Nazi occupied Europe. However, many forget to acknowledge that among these were children. It may never be known exactly how many children were murdered but it is said that as many as some 1.5 million children may have fell victim to the Nazi party. Although children were not a main target of the Nazi's violence, they did fall subject to persecution along with their parents. Jewish children were first exposed to persecution in school. Many of their friends who were not Jewish began not socializing with them and even began to treat them in prejudice ways. This was soon followed with the announcement that, "German Jewish children were prohibited from attending German schools (www.mtsu.edu/.baustin/children.html). The life of children had quickly become as torn apart as their parents. However, there were more efforts to help the children escape the grips of the Nazi rule. Before 1939, several thousand children were able to escape in "Kindertransports to the Netherlands, Great Britain, Palestine, and the United States (www.mtsu.edu/.baustin/children.html). Those who were not able to escape were placed in ghettos and transit camps. These ghettos and transit camps served as the foreground to the death and slave labor camps that would soon follow. It was written in a Jewish diary, A Jewish ghetto in the traditional sense is impossible; certainly a closed ghetto is...
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...start of an accelerating progression towards world war. Under the dominion of Hitlers ambitions, Germany invaded western Poland as a result of the intransigence between both countries. World War II ravaged civilians more severely than any previous conflict, and served as the justification for genocidal killings by Nazi Germany, under the order of Hitler. To fully understand how Hitler attained the support of a nation to agree with his ideology, one must know the conditions before the wake of World War II, and how Hitler instilled influential ideas of national pride. In this essay, I intend on showing why it is important to understand a certain aspect of World War II. I will first focus on establishing the importance of knowing what events led Germany into the circumstances it was in prior to World War II. Accordingly, I will then analyze Hitlers ideology, and why it is vital to understand his point of view. That being the case, I will then narrow the focus on the genocidal killing of Jews by Hitler, and emphasize the importance of understanding why this was happening. From there I will probe through the writings of Hitler in his work of Mein Kampf, and discuss how knowing...
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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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...Oswiecim, Poland (The Auschwitz Album: The Story of a Death Factory). It was 37 miles west of Krakow and one of 4 concentration camps in Poland (Auschwitz: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Many Jews were transported to Auschwitz by trains (Auschwitz: Gale Student Resources in Context). Auschwitz would become a death machine killing more than 1 million people. Auschwitz was a concentration camp, built by the Nazis in April of 1940 (Wigoder, Abwehr to Extermination Camps). Most prisoners did not survive Auschwitz. It was liberated on January 27, 1945 (Wigoder, Abwehr to Extermination Camps). The fact that most prisoners did not survive Auschwitz means that Auschwitz was a key component of the Holocuast. Auschwitz was founded to be the answer to the Jewish question (Wigoder, Abwehr to Extermination Camps). It was the largest concentration camp (Wigoder, Abwehr to Extermination Camps), being 15.44 square miles (Auschwitz: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Auschwitz also had 3 main camps and over 40 sub camps (The Auschwitz Album: The Story of a Death Factory). Auschwitz was the worst concentration camp of all. The Nazis killed 1.1 to 1.5 million people at Auschwitz (The Auschwitz Album: The Story of a Death Factory). Only 20% were selected to work (The Auschwitz Album:...
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...The Changing Len of Danish Holocaust History Danish Holocaust history has gone through remarkable shifts in how the event has been perceived. Originally, Denmark’s rescue of the majority of their Jews had been a heroic tale of Danish goodwill. More recently this idealistic view of the Danish Holocaust has been reexamined and scrutinized. There reasons surrounding why Danish Holocaust history is different from all of the other occupied European countries is very complex. Denmark was able so successful, not solely because of their character, but because of a multitude of factors which combined in a way that allowed an environment for Jewish rescue from deportation. At the surface Danish Holocaust history is presented as a light in the darkness...
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...Kenny Smith April 20th, 2003 The role of men in society has been a vital. Men were subjected to the same inhumane and horrifying events that happened during the Holocaust. When one thinks of a man, you think of father, solider and other manly things. A great deal of pride comes along with being and man. Along with pride, testosterone, intensity, and all sorts of other factors key into the characteristics of men. However, the Holocaust completely stripped men of most of these characteristics. The Holocaust did not allow men to be men. Holocaust art, the “Tale of the Sprinter” by Sudeep Pagedar, and Vladek Spiegelman in the memoirs Maus by Art Spiegelman are examples of how men suffered during the Holocaust and the amount of empathy produced from the suffering of these men. Empathy is the ability to see something from somebody else's point of view and to walk a mile in their shoes if you will. Men are very prideful individuals who are very dominating members of society. The atrocity of the Holocaust has been displayed and expressed through various pieces of art and literature. Famous Holocaust painters like Felix Nussbaum have expressed this atrocity through art. Felix Nussbaum was a prisoner at Auschwitz who died there in 1944. The image to the right is one Nussbaum’s paintings that survived the Holocaust. Besides the man sitting on this wooden box, you see two other men in the rear who appear to be using the bathroom. The condition that these men were forced to live in...
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...Alexia Gonzalez Political Science 4823: The Holocaust/ the Shoah Final Paper December 12, 2013 The Comparative Analysis of the Holocaust Ethnic cleansing and genocide are considered to coexist in a spectrum of assaults on nations or religio-ethnic groups. These threats were more prominent during the 20th century which caused massive violations of human rights and jeopardized the overall security of humans. Determinants of ethnic cleansing and genocide root from socio-political factors influenced by deeply embedded ideologies which are manifested by political leaders of specific regime types. During World War II, German authorities targeted Jews and other minority groups like the gypsies and Pols due to their perceived racial inferiority. The German ideology in attempt to eradicate these auxiliary groups led to the conflict known as the Shoah. The Shoah is the biblical word meaning destruction and it is the standard Hebrew term for the murder of European Jewry. The Shoah was the systematic, bureaucratic and state sponsored persecution of six million Jews. Comparable to other ethnic based genocides, Germans believed they were racially superior and that Jews were inferior; and deemed a threat to the “German racial community” resulting in their mass murder. Various interpretations of the Shoah has given rise to similar attitudes and opinions regarding its historical events. The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, is one of the largest resources of its kind which includes...
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...Telling the History of the Holocaust The history of the Holocaust is often studied in a macro format, which incorporates the use of secondary sources to give an overview of events as they happened. The macro format focuses on the key figures such as Hitler and Himmler and how their actions directly affected the topic. Studying the macro history of the Holocaust fails to capture the feelings and opinions of the German people during this time. The study of primary sources written by the German people who lived through the event; give vital information on the German population and their feelings toward Hitler’s radical ideology. This paper will illustrate the history of the Holocaust from the perspective of secondary sources or the macro view, then using Ruth Klueger’s memoir, Still Alive add additional information the other books fail to include. In order to fully understand the history of the Holocaust you must study both primary and secondary sources. The Holocaust begins with the architect Adolf Hitler. In 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany the popularity he gained had little to nothing to do with and Anti-Semitism beliefs the party had, because ‘depriving the Jews of making a living would hurt the economic recovery”. (Gellately 4) Hitler at first openly attacked the communist party in order to save Germany from “the Marxist Attack” and would eliminate any political rivals. On March 23, 1933 Hitler was able to successfully pass the Enabling Act stating...
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...How far do you agree with the fact that the events of the Second World War were the most important factor in the creation of an independent state of Israel in 1948? Israel was created in 1948 after World War Two (WW2), because Britain had become bankrupt and couldn’t maintain its global colonies. The end of the British mandate formally provided a homeland for the Jewish citizens in Palestine, although the events that occurred in WW2, such as the Holocaust can be seen as the most important factors in providing a homeland for the Jewish. It can be seen that WW2 advanced the Jewish position in a claim for a homeland, more than the Palestinian position. This was boosted by the fact that an estimated 6 million Jews were persecuted by the Nazis in the Holocaust, which shocked the globe. This is one of the most important factors for a Jewish claim for a homeland, as the Jewish community felt worldwide sympathy as millions of Jews had died. Although the Holocaust was not only a Nazi persecution of the Jews, other leaders carried it out across Europe. During the war, thousands of Jews fled to Palestine to avoid the Nazi regime, and by the end of the war, Jewish population grew tenfold between 1919 and 1947, from 60 000 to over 600 000 Jews in Palestine. This showed the Jewish vulnerability as the wished for a place where they could avoid anti-Semitism a place they could feel safe in. During the war the Jewish community supported the British army, therefore they were able to gain...
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...Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel Anne Frank was a 13 year-old girl when she was going through the holocaust. Her and her family moved to the netherlands to try and avoid the conflict of the war, but eventually the germans invaded and took the netherlands which forced anne and her sister margot to go to a Jewish school and her dad Otto lost his business. Elie Wiesel was a jewish boy who lived in a small Hungarian town who liked reading old jewish books about his culture. There were many similarities and differences between these two young individuals. One being the setting of where they were at, another being what time period and event took place, and what happened to their families. Anne went into hiding while Elie was taken to a concentration...
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...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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