...and untouched humanity ideas during an evil historic event like the Holocaust? Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, will answer this question. Throughout history humanity has faced numerous tragic event caused either by nature or human beings, both of God’s creations. The Holocaust, which means “sacrifice by fire”, began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. During the Holocaust the Jews were the most affected. The Nazis killed eleven million Jews, almost two-thirds of all the Jewish population living in Europe. Jews were not the only ones the Holocaust targeted; Gypsies, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also victims of Hitler’s plan. In recent years, events like The Twin Towers terrorist attack in 2001 and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami have brought enormous suffering to the world, suffering that can somehow be compared to the one lived during the Holocaust. Continuing is the analysis of Elie Wiesel’s horrific experiences during the Holocaust. Did these experiences affect his faith? Was his perception of humanity ideas impacted? The book Night starts describing Elie’s faith as one indestructible. As young as he was he had deep knowledge of Jewish mysticism studies. Elie believed in God; a God of love and unlimited power. He was told that God is the master creator of all world’s wonders and that these wonders where the emanation of the divine world. Elie concluded that if God was the creator of everything in the physical world and God is a God of love then the world...
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...during the holocaust. Elie Wiesel supports his main theme multiple times by using many literary devices such as irony and hyperboles to strengthen his message; he gives the reader a more complex , and vivid depiction of the theme. Elies most important and vital human connections are his family or more specifically his father. Sadly as his father began to weaken Elie started to expect him to die and leave him all alone which made him lose his spirit, and determination to survive. Night holds many strong, and powerful themes but one particularly important one is that one must have human connections to have strength and remain sane: these human connections could be...
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...November 2014 We can know the end of the story just by knowing that Ellie Wiesel wrote the book. We know it because this book is about survival. Physically we know Ellie Wiesel survived the holocaust, but does any psychological or spiritual part of him died during the holocaust? Elie Wiesel wrote about all the horrible torture, brutality, degradation, lost, and inhumanities he suffered by the Nazis just because he’s Jewish. Considering Elie was just a teenager, all he had to go through could turn his faith, religion, humanity, or beliefs. Before the Nazis took Elie and his family we could notice that Elie was a strong, religious boy who wanted to learn the Cabbala. Moshe the Beadle taught him it, and answered all Elie’s questions. By the point of Elie learning the Cabbala his faith was very strong. Elie compared praying with breathing, it is something so important for him that he does it without thinking. He’s faith in god is unconditional, and he believes since God is good and its everywhere, then his world and everything in it must be good too. I believe Elie knowing the Cabbala took an important role in his spiritual survival. Elie Wiesel was devoted to his faith to God, humanity of others, and a sense of justice in the world; which eventually we know are beliefs challenged by the holocaust events. One of the first events occurred to Elie was his mother and sisters being taken away, and learning about the crematorium. So Elie knowing he is surrounded by death and suffering...
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...explanation for the existence of evil in a world created by God. John Hick, in his book, Evil and The God of Love - states that God gave us free will to develop and become perfect. Hick argues that we are born as immature and imperfect, therefore we develop virtues in order to become more in God’s likeness; we develop these virtues by suffering. This suffering therefore is caused by pain, so arguably evil is the cause of our developing characteristics that enable us to reach heaven and to become one with God. Furthermore, Augustine puts forward the argument that evil is the result of human free will, and not God’s own doing. Augustine sheds light on The Fall,where it is stated that God gave Adam and Eve free will. However, they chose to abuse this, as they supposedly ate the forbidden fruit. Thus, resulting in the ‘lapse’ of mankind. However, if God had not permitted the possibility of evil, as humans we would be restricted to have free will. Catastrophic events such as the Holocaust show clear indications of evil on large scales, caused by arguably human misuse of free will decision making. If God were to stop such events, he would arguably be having to choose and draw lines between different occurrences of evil, such as larger scale events as opposed to an individual murder. God cannot be said to be responsible for evil in some respects, as it can be said that evil is simply humanities misuse of free will - as to which has been granted to us. In the parable of the king and the peasant...
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...go gentle into that good night,” but to “rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Thomas, 1 and 3). Thomas hoped that his father would find the strength to not give up in his fight for life. Their familial love gave his father the hope to do the seemingly impossible and defy death, for a little longer. Hope is key to surviving in any situation, but it takes a lot of emotional strength to maintain. During the Holocaust, this was truer than ever for millions of people, who faced death every day, and were tortured, starved, and violated. Their hope in religion, the goodness of humanity, and themselves were continually tested and most victims’ hope were eventually lost because of their suffering. One survivor, Elie Wiesel, wrote a memoir, Night, sharing his experiences during the Holocaust and in a concentration camp, and solemnly displaying his progression of hope. Elie's gradual loss of hope caused him to lose the emotional strength that he needs to survive, which made him desperate to cling on to the familial identity that was...
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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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...to blame, somebody to be the burden bearers of an entire nation, to give one man and his idea the power that he needed to commit such horrific acts of violence and crimes against humanity. Whole generations were lost, not because of disease or famine, but because of a sick and twisted ideology that a specific group of humans were less than the ground they walk on. Those six million people are now no more than a photo, a memory, a dream, maybe even a name on a memorial wall. The name of this event is as well-known as the people who began and participated in this systematic annihilation of a race, it is called The Holocaust. The name in itself has a deeper meaning beyond the nine letters given to the event. The name represents how much this has truly affected the world over the past sixty years. Some would say that The Holocaust was just genocide, which has happened many times through the course of written and televised history. The name shows how significant it was after World War II and how significant it still is today by simply having a specific name rather than merely being called the genocide of the Jewish people. It also represents how one word can evoke more emotions, memories, and recollections than any event in history. Virtually everyone in the world was affected by The Holocaust by 1945. That is a powerful sentiment in itself, showing not only how those six...
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...A deep scar left on the world, from one of the darkest eras of human kind. The holocaust was a horrific part of history where nearly 11 million people died under the hands one political leader. The short film Behind the Swastika: Nazi Atrocities provides real footage of the German concentration camps in World War II taken by Canadians. These monstrosities propels one to wonder how someone could do such a thing, and frightening enough it deems the response of why not? It causes humanity to ask what responsibility do people have to others? It guides to the exploration of the concept of humanity, being ambassadors for justice and challenges us to view things from the Nazi perspective. Humans are much more than just mere mammals and are...
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...man’s humanity to man.” The human race has shown humanity at times and other times, not so much. Humanity is the greatest key to unlocking many doors to a great life. The books Night written by Elie Wiesel and Tuesdays With Morrie written by Mitch Albom exemplify humanity and inhumanity. Inhumanity is shown in Night, humanity is shown in Tuesdays With Morrie, and in both books there is a change of heart. Night is about the Holocaust, and how a young boy was forced away from his mother and sisters and left with his reserved father. When the young boy, Elie, and his family were forced away from their homes, they thought it was for the better. “Splendid news from the Russian Front. There could no longer be any doubt: Germany would be defeated. It was only a matter of time, months or weeks, perhaps…Annihilate an entire people? Wipe out a population dispersed throughout so many nations? So many millions of people! By what means? In the middle of the twentieth...
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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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...hindler’s ListA CRITICAL ANALYSIS In 1993, the greatest filmmaker of our time did exactly what we expected, and then he turned around and surprised us. That year, for the third time in his career, Steven Spielberg broke the record for the highest-grossing film of all time. Big, grand, and exciting, with dynamite special effects, Jurassic Park was a typical Spielberg film. But while Jurassic Park was breaking records, we heard that Spielberg was in Europe filming, of all things, a black-and-white Holocaust drama. This came as a surprise, but it could never have prepared us for the experience of Schindler's List. And what an experience it is. It's not just another day at the movies, another piece of escapist fare. It is entertaining to be sure, but it is much more than that. It is gut-wrenching, emotional, and visionary. Sitting in the theater, I knew this was something special, a film and an experience I would never forget. Schindler's List is the true story of Oskar Schindler, an undeniably flawed man. A native German, he relocated to Cracow, Poland after it fell into German hands so he could capitalize on Jewish labor at slave wages. There he established an enamelware factory and made obscene amounts of money while wining, dining, and bribing Nazi officials to get his way. But while Schindler was profiting from the Jews' work, he was disgusted by the way the they were treated. He underwent an important change, slowly realizing that this was wrong and that he could do something...
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...Schindler’s List Essay Oskar Schindler would never have been anyone’s ideal savior, especially for the Jewish community. He was an open member of the Nazi party, a womanizer, a gambler, an alcoholic, and an extremely money hungry man, but insight of all of this he was successfully able to rescue over twelve hundred Jewish men and women from death. Schindler was a very tall and handsome man. Needless to say, he was adored by all the young women he met eyes with. However, Schindler fell for a beautiful young girl named Emily. After only six weeks of courtship, they were married. Sadly, after only a few months of marriage, Schindler began to heavily abuse alcohol. He also had several affairs resulting in two children out of wedlock. In 1929, during the Great Depression, the Schindler family business went bankrupt. At this time, Schindler’s father left his mother, and she died soon after. Finding himself jobless, Schindler sought work in nearby Poland as a machinery salesman. The saving of the first Schindler Jews began in 1939, when he came to Krakow in the wake of the German invasion. In Krakow, he took over two previously Jewish owned companies that dealt with the manufacture and sales of kitchenware products. In one of the businesses, however, Schindler was merely a trustee. Looking more for his own power, he opened up a small enamel shop right outside of Krakow near the Jewish ghetto. Here, he employed mostly Jewish workers. This in turn saved them from being...
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...During the holocaust, there was much bloodshed. Countless innocent Jewish lives were taken by the Nazi army. The Holocaust was the planned extermination of all Jews in order to create the perfect race, known as “The Aryan Race”. The Nazi army killed off many that were not of German blood, and also killed the Germans who were physically and mentally disabled. Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 and committed many acts of violence during his reign .The main reasons for the Holocaust were: The Treaty of Versailles, The Weimar Republic, and Anti- Semitism. Each of the following are major factors, which lead to the uprising of the holocaust. One cause of the Holocaust was the Treaty of Versailles, which was a Peace treaty between...
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...“ If we had a moment of silence for every victim of the holocaust we would be silent for eleven and a half years “ . During The holocaust there were many vile acts but they all had one thing in common which were the acts were inhumane and cold-blooded . Even normal things that many humans today take for granted such as water even a tiny piece of bread would mean the a lot to them . The germans were inhumane . Being inhumane is a horrific thing to be put through or do to someone else , wanting to feel human again , witnessing it all ,and being the one who is putting people through it .The experience for Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO of being in what he called horror camps was extremely inhumane . He said in his diary excerpt...
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...Alyssa Del Toro Hum.18-Death Professor Santos Essay Genocide Genocide was the term that came out after the Nazi’s Holocaust of World War Two, but it was not the first incident of Genocide, or the last. During the Genocide Convention that followed World War Two it was agreed amongst the world leaders that genocide would “never again” occur in the world. Time has shown that this might have been an empty promise however, and this essay will review the laws being implemented by the United Nations to help prevent genocide, arguments about why humans kill, incidents of genocide and how genocide is defined and, of course, the victims of the violent crime known as genocide. Genocide is now defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “[t]he deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group”. The United Nations created a much broader and in depth definition in the Genocide Convention of 1948. They state that genocide is “…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part; imposing measures to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. Despite some flaws and loopholes in this definition, it covers the atrocities that occur...
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