...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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...but even in the darkest of times and among demons we seem to find some shed of hope and light. Ruth Kluger and Primo Levi are able to express their darkest and hopeful moments and thoughts through their exquisite and precise wording of their memoirs. Ruth Kluger’s memoir is titled Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood...
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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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...Many people have written about the Holocaust. But not many Holocaust survivors have written about their personal experiences of this horrific period. Although we have read dozens of historical books and articles about this genocide written by well respected historians, there aren’t enough memoirs of the Holocaust written by people who experienced everything first hand. Books that are considered primary sources are very few and this is why those biographies and autobiographies of victims and survivors of the Holocaust are priceless. Primo Levi’s memoir If This Is A Man is one of those books describing the horrible acts that the author endured during the Holocaust. In his autobiography, Levi describes his time in Auschwitz after being captured by the Nazis during World War II until the concentration camp’s liberation almost two years later. The events are described in chronological order in the way the Italian – Jew author experienced it all....
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...Survival in Auschwitz provide two very different accounts of the same event: the Holocaust. There are very basic and obvious differences between Alicia Jurman and Primo Levi, which are shown in the table below. Although these differences seem minor, they had a major affect on the differences between the events Alicia and Primo faced. Age Gender Country of Origin Concentration Camp v. Hiding Alicia Jurman 9 yrs - 15 yrs Female Poland Hiding Primo Levi 24 yrs Male Italy Concentration Camp - Auschwitz Alicia was only nine years old when Poland was invaded by the Germans. Alicia’s young age during the Holocaust earned her the right to be called a “child hero”. It is possible that her young age added to her determination. She knew she was in constant danger, but it did not seem that she had a full understanding of just how serious that danger was. Primo was also very young, and even described how his young age contributed to his naivety: “I was twenty-four, with little wisdom, no experience and a decided tendency….. to live in an unrealistic world of my own…..I cultivated a moderate and abstract sense of rebellion”. Although Primo discussed his immaturity, it still seemed that he had a better understanding of the gravity of the situation. The gender differences also played a role in the different experiences. As a female, Alicia was more able to go into hiding. Even if Primo had escaped, it was too risky for men to hide. Most men, especially young men of...
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...The Holocaust ended May 8th, 1945 with the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest camp in Nazi territory and the one where most deaths took place; but for those who were lucky enough to survive, the effects of the war would remain with them for the rest of their lives. Not only were the Jews stripped of all their belongings and identity, but they were also forced to betray their own ethical codes. As survivors tried to assimilate back in to every day life, the memories of the family they had lost and the brutal events they witnessed kept resurfacing, leaving long-term psychological effects such as: anxiety, depression, psychosomatic disorders, survival guilt, isolation, and sleep disturbances. Not only did the survivors themselves experience these effects, but their children and grandchildren would as well. Victor Frankl’s memoir Man Search for Meaning, Lawrence Langer’s memoir Holocaust Testimonies: The...
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...1. How does their story of survival compare to that of Primo Levi? 2. Why do you think Art Spiegelman draws the characters of his book as mice, cats, pig etc.? 3. Maus 4. What was Vladek like? 5. Vladek is an older person with a very précised in what he want and he son see this as being annoying. He feels you need to be aware of everything. He does not trust people specially his second wife Mala. He has hearth problems and he is diabetic. Sometime he used his sickness to his advantage. 6. During the Holocaust, he exhibited a spectacular resourcefulness, work ethic, and presence of mind that often enabled him to secure food, shelter, and safety for himself and his family. He was a shrewd businessman, and in the most troubling times he saved everything of use. In 1978, he still saves everything and tries to exchange those things that he no longer needs. Once so resourceful and competent, he is still constantly working on small projects, some of which he is incapable of completing. Vladek's personality is largely dominated by his Holocaust experiences. 7. What do we know of his life before the holocaust? 8. He was a happy bachelor living his life in the small city of Czestochowa. He used to sell textiles. Vladek was organized person his apartment was small but organized. He met Anja and soon he felt in love with her. When Anja take him to her house to meet her parent, he checks her clothes to see what kind of wife she will be. To his surprise she...
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... double-spaced, with standard 1” margins, and good use of the text/s or film/s discussed, indicate and identify quotations in the accepted academic way (which I or the Writing Lab will be glad to make clear if necessary) without resort to unnecessary foot- or endnotes. Note that you also have the option of writing on an idea of your own as long as you deal with a work on the syllabus and run it by me first, and that you may expand your presentation, if you have given one. 1. “Primo Levi entitles his first book If This Is a Man (Si questo e un uomo), but it became well known and read widely in translation from the Italian as Survival in Auschwitz aspects of the book.” Discuss. 2. Discuss the possible significance in the narrative as a whole of the episode in Elie Wiesel’s Night (pp. 58-9 in the Hill and Wang edition) where Elie finds his Kapo Idek having sex with a young woman in the empty warehouse. 3. In the last three paragraphs of Chapter 13 of Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi describes a man called Kuhn praying aloud, “thanking God that he has not been chosen” in “the great selection of October 1944.” In the title story of This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen Tadek writes of “naked, sweat drenched men” crowding the barrack aisles, and “directly beneath me [. . .] a rabbi” reading from a Hebrew prayer book and “wailing loudly, monotonously” (Penguin, p. 31). Compare the perspectives in these two scenes and the tone and attitudes of each narrator...
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...PART I Night In 1941 Ellie lived in Transylvanian, there he studied Talmud and other Jewish studies, such as Kabbalah. After learning with Moshe the Beadle, the Hungarians evacuated all foreign Jews as-well with Moshe. Moshe was able to escape and returned several months later, and explained the brutal treatment that they encountered, but most people did not believe him. 1944 the Nazis gained power in Hungry, and all Jews were crowded into a small ghetto. After a while the Nazis started to deport all the Jews in the ghetto to Auschwitz. On the train the Jews were packed in, with almost no air to breathe, everyone was thirsty and hungry. After some days of traveling the Jews arrived in Czech, and a German officer takes over the train. The officer warned everyone that to give of their valuables or get shot. The train doors were then nailed to prevent people from escaping. Madame Schächter, was the first person to go crazy on the train, she starts to yell about a fire, which is not there. After some time a few boys beat her to silent as her son watches in fear, but the next night she started to yell once again. The Jews arrive in Auschwitz, but it was not as they have been told. They were told although it is a labor camp; the families will be kept as one. As the train traveled through the barb wire they see chimneys of smoke, and there is terrible smell, which they later find out that it is human flesh. The camp that they arrived in is the processing camp for Auschwitz. At Birkenau...
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...Gourevitch does so by incorporating two quotes from the same person. The first is from Primo Levi, a survivor in Auschwitz, in 1958 in which he says ,”If there is one thing sure in this world, it is certainly this: that it will not happen to us a second time.” Underneath that, in 1986, Levi says, “It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen and it can happen everywhere.” Gourevitch’s message is not that people should be made aware of genocides so humans can avoid genocide from occurring anew. With these two quotes from the same person, it strongly develops his message that genocide can happen again. Gourevitch wants the Rwandan Genocide to be known because of it’s inhumane slaughter and it’s unambiguity. Some might even say that the Rwandan Genocide was far more horrifying than the Holocaust, since the dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times than the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust. The Rwandan Genocide questioned everyone about how easily humans are prone to fear and doing things so easily that they never thought they were able to...
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...peer pressure of not stepping up against the idea • Testimony was consistent—gives it weight and truth • Career destruction – thought that if they refused to kill Jews that it would destroy there business/careers • Holocaust: The ignored Reality- Timothy Snyder • What is wrong with making (A) the iconic Holocaust experience? o It was the western most camp o Eastern killings are much unknown o Should view as one mass murder o Most Jews were polish Jews that were killed o Jews killed at (A) were not representative victims • Jews at (A) came mostly from western Europe • More educated/less religious than Polish Jews o (A) was not as bad other camps • Gets attention because there are a lot of survivors • Educated prisoners were able to write and share their story • Western released prisoners were able to spread their stories easier than eastern survivors who were under Soviet rule o 50% of the victims did not die by gas, they died by bullet • Focusing on camps leaves out a large portion of the killings most importantly the mass shootings • Shame- Primo Levi o What (widely-held) ideas about Holocaust survival is Primo Levi trying to dispel? • The people were experienced liberation as a joyous moment- the memories of survivors become colored by the Hollywood scripts. The...
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...Throughout human history there have been defining moments that were the reasons behind many of this world best and worst times. These moments, often involve either to loving or tormenting nature of mankind. The Jewish holocaust is an example of the latter. What took place in the early 1940s in then Nazi Germany, has effected the world in dramatic ways. More importantly, its impact on those who survived it can not be ignored or forgotten. The millions of lives lost during that time often are simply remembered as a numbers. In reality, these were mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers. Most of all, they are innocent people being killed because of their ethnicity. So, with the holocaust being a stand out moment in 20th century it is important to examine a few things. Its impact on those who were there, what it says about mankind, and how it shaped history. To properly understand the topic at hand, it is important to first discuss the impact of...
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...God’s will, that God really wanted the Jewish People to be exterminated.” Rubenstein’s belief in the evil of the Holocaust is opposed by the Dean’s idea of God’s absolute power over human lives and his just intentions. He says, “When God desires my death, I give it to him…For some reason, it was part of God’s plan that the Jews died. God demands our death daily. He is the Lord, He is the...
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...PHL 101 11 March 2012 A Summary of the problem of evil and a critical evaluation of how it is said to undermine the traditional characteristics of God. This paper will attempt to review the philosophical quandary of the existence of evil and if evil exists can God exist and if so can this God still be declared perfect? The epistemological issue that arises is One’s knowledge of God and the validity of God’s existence. What is good and what is evil? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines evil as: 1. a : morally reprehensible : sinful, wicked <an evil impulse> b : arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct <a person of evil reputation> 2 a: archaic : inferior b : causing discomfort or repulsion : offensive <an evil odor> c : disagreeable <woke late and in an evil temper> 3 a : causing harm : pernicious <the evil institution of slavery> b : marked by misfortune : unlucky For the purpose of this paper, we will use the first definition. Evil is a trait that we as human beings possess. Whether we choose to use it is up to the individual. But what is evil? Do we as humans consciously choose to be good or evil? What plays a role in bringing out that evil? We next need to look at what is God and does he exist? God as defined by Merriam-Webster is: 1. capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator...
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...The Holocaust: Suggested Reading There is a wealth of information about the Holocaust. So much has been written, in fact, that it can be difficult to determine where to start. This reading list is collected from recommendations from other members of The Holocaust History Project. It is not a complete bibliography but represents our opinion as to what are the most useful starting places for research. Since this list concentrates on works that are easily available and useful to a person unacquainted with the history of the Holocaust, many excellent books which are rare or out of print are not listed. Another class of books that are not included is works that are controversial because of their contents or the unusual theories they propose. Some of these are excellent works, others are not. But we feel that the reader for whom this list was compiled would not have the knowledge needed to evaluate these discussions of the legitimate controversies about the Holocaust. Just as a medical student must learn anatomy before he or she is taught surgery, someone studying the Holocaust must know the factual background before some of the more technical studies can be understood. As well as general works we have included books of specialized interest concerning the matters about which we at The Holocaust History Project are most frequently asked. Many of these books deal with more than one subject, but in the interest of brevity we have not cited a book more than once. General history of the...
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