...Why do the survivors of such a tragic event such as the Holocaust want to remember those horrifying times by writing about memories that most people would only want to forget? I will show, Weisel has talked about, and as others have written, that the victims of the holocaust wrote about their experiences not only to preserve the history of the event, but so that those who were not involved and those who did survive can understand what really happened. They wanted the people of the world to realize how viciously they were treated. On top of wanting us to understand, they also want to understand why this happened. Why did the Lord let this happen? Why did the people of the world stand by and let such a thing happen to so many people? Today in the 90's we cannot think of letting so many people suffer, as those seven million people did in the mid-40s. Perhaps the most recognized writer of the holocaust is Elie Wiesel. He was taken from his home and put into the concentration camps when he was still a young boy. Wiesel once said, "I write in order to understand as much as to be understood." He was liberated in 1945 and, once he was liberated "he imposed a ten-year vow of silence upon himself before trying to describe what had happened to him and over six million other Jews." In a lecture on the dimensions of the holocaust Wiesel said, ""The Holocaust as Literary Inspiration" is a contradiction in terms. As in everything else, Auschwitz negates all systems, destroys all doctrines...
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...“For me the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy,” said Simon Wiesenthal. “After the war, when I saw that the Jews were talking only about the tragedy of six million Jews, I sent letters to Jewish organizations asking them to talk also about the millions of others who were persecuted with us together – many of them only because they helped Jews.” Mr. Wiesenthal was just one of the survivors from the brutal Holocaust who will forever remember the worst time of his life. How he was torn away from his family and was used as a slave for the Nazis. Yet he was still able to have sympathy and think about others. The Holocaust had a significant impact on America by giving lessons about genocides and preventing other genocides, how they punished war criminals after the...
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...Effects of the Holocaust on Survivors’ Hundreds of people die each day. Two-thirds of the Jewish population were killed, not a big deal, right? Six million people died in a matter of four years because of a one ERRONEOUS idea created by a horrendous man. That number is baffling. Not many people who believed in the Jewish faith made it out alive, anti-semitism, but the people who didn't die are being affected in many ways. The people who were involved in the Holocaust should have gotten a lot more help than they did at first. Anything would have helped them, even a loaf of bread. Many survivors continue to suffer from the effects of the Holocaust; the world should have done something to stop these horrible effects on people such as survivor's...
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...1) ‘The teachings of Rubenstein on post-Holocaust theology are more convincing than of Fackenheim.’ The Holocaust can be considered the greatest tragedy of human history, it included the cold blooded extermination of 6million Jews, and millions of others who were disabled, homosexuals or whom didn’t agree with the Nazi regime. The Nazi’s came to power because they were depressed from the German defeat in WW1 and humiliated with the reparation payments. Consequently, the National Socialist Party, (Nazi’s) rose to power in the weak environment using propaganda to blame the Jews for the war. The Nazi’s never started anti-Semitism, they just bought a political dimension to anti-Semitism- there was still the suspicion that Jews were blood libels. The Nazi’s rose to power from 1933-1945 and within that time, millions of people were humiliated, beaten, starved, gassed to death, cremated and burnt in mass graves. Over 6million Jews were killed during the Holocaust in evil ways, and those that survived were left with the mental scars and images of what they lived through miraculously. The cruelty that they witnessed, along with the personal and communal sufferings that they endured left the Jews that were able to survive with a shaken faith and the ability to question G-d’s existence. Four theologians; Eliezer Berkowitz, Emile Fackenheim, Ignaz Maybaum and Richard Rubenstein provide the main sources and viewpoints that Jews after the Holocaust base their beliefs on. Eliezer Berkowitz...
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...Irena Sendler Irena Sendler was a Polish Catholic woman with empathy for those around her. She watched Jewish families get moved into ghettos, she reached out and saved around 2,500 Jewish children, and was imprisoned and almost sent to death because of it. The resistance was important to the survival of Jews in the holocaust. People saved thousands of Jews in their efforts against the Nazis. People like Pere Marie-Benoit, Marie and Emile Taquet, and the Polish Zegota organization made huge endeavors against the holocaust. In 1939 German Nazis began to occupy Poland, and in 1940 Irena witnessed the imprisonment of 500,000 Jews in ghettos. She began to offer shelter to her close friends. She starting assembling false documents for Jews, which ultimately ended up saving almost 3,000 Jewish families....
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...were expressed into a traumatic event titled the Holocaust. People that followed the Jewish religion, often called “Jews”, were believed to be inhumane by Hitler and the German Nazi party and were forced to their own deaths, regardless of their age, gender, or race. Individuals in concentration camps were traumatized to the point where they became unafraid of death; they saw it as a part of everyday life. Artists, philosophers, critics and musicians all have developed different ways of expressing their thoughts and feelings towards the Holocaust and each of these representations are relevant in their own individual aspects....
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...Holocaust Museum My Mom, my cousin and I all went to the Holocaust Museum in Richmond. Upon arriving at the museum the outside of the building looked a little scary, because all the windows had boards and locks on them. As we went in the building we went to the information desk and this older man told us that the museum was built by survivors of Holocaust that ended up living in Richmond many years later. He then told us to go into the video room and watch the video and then come back and they would tell us what to do from there. The video was of four survivors telling their reasons for building the museum and telling the stories of the Holocaust. The reason for the museum is because the survivors are getting older and they do not want people to forget about the tragedies that happened to the Jewish people so that history would never repeats itself. When the video finished we went back to the information desk and was given a book with a map in it and told which way to start the tour. As we walked down the hall it was a little scary because everything was dark until you got to certain parts of the rooms. In the first room (Dachau/Buchenwald) we went into it showed how the “prisoners” had to sleep. The bunks were from the floor to ceiling made out of wood and two to three people to each bunk they had no blankets or pillows. They looked as if they were sleeping on top of each other. A Nazi soldier stood with a gun aimed at them all the time. In another room it showed...
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...MODULE C – History and Memory Sample 1 How has your understanding of events, personalities or situations been shaped by their representations in the texts you have studied. Refer to your prescribed text and at least TWO other related texts of your own choosing. History can be defined as “the methodical record of public events” where memory is defined as “the faculty by which events are recalled or kept in mind”. Thus history and memory interrelate as history can be seen as the contextual justification for memory. “The Fiftieth Gate” is a poignant interweaving of history and memory. The text follows protagonist, Mark Baker an historian, son of Holocaust survivors Genia and Yossl (Joe), on an historical journey through memory, to uncover the origins of his past and act as a catalyst for future generations to also connect with their history. Mark Baker’s journey through history and memory is also executed through his conventional ideas that memory is biased and less valid than history. There are numerous references to the discrepancies between the personal memories of his parents and the documented history Mark as an historian believes. In this way it is apparent that Mark is on a quest for verification, “my facts from the past are different”. This displays the flaw Mark traditionally notes in memory and his need for historical evidence. As responders accompany Mark on his journey, they also encounter the complexity of simultaneously being a son and an historian. This...
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...drives a bit by pressing the gas pedal. The next event, they toss these kids one by one on to the ambulance. Just like they weren’t even kids at all. Especially 2 or 3 of the kids, were violently thrown in. The next thing I saw was the man that was with the kids get in as well. It was silent because the director said that words just would not do it justice. People sometimes do end up getting lost in what is going on because they are listening to what is being said. There is no need to have them talking because it’s really self-explanatory and speaks by what is being shown. I learned that these kids were being taken and killed by the loads. It’s sad to think of these kids as alone and being murdered, but this one man that went with them, who didn’t have to, died with them. Very touching and it’s something new that I learned about and decisions that some of the people probably made on a regular basis during the Holocaust. The next film, Imaginary Witness basically just depicted the Holocaust through films. It tells us that compared to how the survivors of the Holocaust actually were. For instance, I learned that after the Holocaust, some of the survivors, became mute. Didn’t say anything...
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...Shannon Trubatch Imaginary Worlds Assignment 2 ENG201 Behind the Lens: Photographs of the Holocaust Religion has been found to be, time and time again, a factor that influences the actions taken by many, both kind and cruel, across the globe and throughout history. My mother is a Christian, and I grew up in a household celebrating Christian holidays and attending church on Sundays. My father, however, was raised in Long Island in a Jewish home, where he celebrated Hanukah, had a bar mitzvah, and went to temple. As I grew up, I would learn of the history of the world, but nothing would strike me more than the events of the Holocaust. As I continued to learn and grow older, I would begin to understand the atrocities that took place during this time, half a world a way, and the images and films that I saw in regards to the Holocaust would haunt me most of all. A photo essay, compiled by the English department at the University of Illinois, contains a number of photographs from the Holocaust that demonstrates the atrocities that occurred during this time. These photographs support the argument developed by Susan Sontag that photographers must make the decision between a photograph and a life, and that the viewers of these images also have a responsibility to actions of atrocity and human suffering. In Susan Sontag’s book On Photography, she develops the argument that photography is an act of nonintervention; that the photographer is faced with the choice between capturing...
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...humanity are inhumane acts against a certain race or population. This one picture does not even give justice to the millions of people who have lost their lives due to racial profiling and not fitting in to what society thinks is “right”. In this picture there lays the arms of a survivor of one the biggest and devastating genocides the world has ever seen. Leon Greenman is just one of the millions of lives were either taken away or that will never be the same, physically or mentally . A tattoo is part of a permanent moment that can never be taken away and like Leon Greenman and many other survivors of the holocaust,it will always be a part of them. It is clear that there were permanent effects that the Holocaust made an impact on; it is clear looking at the picture of Leon Greenman, he was one the lucky ones who survived and his tattoo shows the proof. During the Holocaust Adolf Hitler did not think of the Jews as humans, he thought they were wastes of space and that they needed to be terminated in order for Germany to have a pure race. By doing this Hitler ordered that all individuals of Jewish descent would be transported to camps such as Auschwitz so either they were worked to death like cattle or immediately killed in gas chambers or other types of crimes against humanity that one could only imagine. These innocent individuals had done no crime but they were punished for being who they were.For some people when they first look at the picture they think they see the hands...
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...It seems that the times of Holocaust are already very far away from the point we are standing now, but everything is not as simple as it seems from the first sight. For many people this time will be something they will never forget, the time of struggle for an opportunity to survive. It was a time for fighting for the right to live, the time when Jews were killed just for “being Jews”, a time when a man with a “yellow star” was doomed. It took place in 1939-1945 and was introduced by Adolph Hitler, a man whose idea was to decontaminate the German race from all the minorities. Thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps, killed or vanished. It was the time of “monopoly on violence”(Torpey, 1997) towards the Jews. This World War II period made an enormous impact on the direction that was taken by the social relations between Jews and other nations. Holocaust divided the lives of Jews into three periods: before, during and after it, which showed how hard was its hit.”…Cats have nine lives, but we - we're less than cats, we got three. The life before, the life during, the life after…"(Joselit, 1995 p.1) Jew people lost loved ones; homes, lives and it took them quiet a time to renew the curative power of their belief. The other main thing resulting from the Holocaust was the influence it had on future terrorism and the appearance of pure racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination. Holocaust the terrorists showed that the “big” goals could be achieved through any possible ways...
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...of funny, right? Sure.” This is how it starts: small. Bullying. A form of abuse: involving repeated acts over time attempting to create or enforce one person's (or group's) power over another person (or group). Recently, I have learned the going-on of one of the most tragic events ever, The Shoah. Through this learning I have derived some profound insights into not only myself, but others. My World Geography class researched acts of the Holocaust and discussed them at length. These exercises changed me, forever. They provided an experience that was incredibly valuable in changing my view on a variety of things: the role of bystanders, empathy, the power of little things, and how to react. Therefore, studying the Holocaust has changed my view and reaction to bullying, which is now focused on both recognizing and stopping bullying. The first thing we discussed about the Holocaust was the string of continuous discriminatory acts against the Jews. It was a changing moment for me. Before then, I had supposed the Holocaust as a random act of sorts - an event without roots before it. I was wrong. I learned that bigotry against Jews had been happening for centuries. It started in 70 A.D. and continued building and building and building. This genealogy of Jewish hatred made me rethink how I viewed small acts of bullying within my own life. Now, instead of seeing a small act of bullying and ignoring it, I see that small act as a piece, a piece of a chain that was...
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...In two pieces of intriguing Holocaust literature, the authors, with very similar purposes, attempt to make a point using different tones. Both of these authors use a variety of writing tools to make their point clear. In the novel The Devil’s Arithmetic, the author Jane Yolen, describes the brutal treatment in the labor camps through a fictional story using a respectful and compassionate tone. In contrast, Peter Fischl wrote his poem, “The Little Polish Boy Standing With His Arms Up”, about an individual boy being terrorized by the Nazi’s with a more intense and aggressive tone. Both authors drive their point, trying to get the reader to remember the atrocities of the demoralizing camps and teach the audience to not be bystanders. This essay...
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...The Sunflower is a first person account of a Jew living in a concentration camp during the Holocaust confronted with the question, when such an atrocity has been committed is it possible for a person to forgive? Throughout Simon flashes between the present in the concentration camp, back to his recent past, even further to his time as a youth. Selected to work outside of the camp one day Simon and others were marched through the town. Along the way he noticed a graveyard for Nazi soldiers and above each grave, a sunflower, had been planted. Upon seeing this, he experienced envy for the soldiers who were still connected to “the living world”(Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 14). Simon indicated his desensitization to death, but upon seeing the graves with flowers and knowing when he died, he would be placed in an unmarked grave with no flowers to tie him to this world, he felt bitterness along with a small hope that he “would come across them again; that they were a symbol with a special meaning”(Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 15). Arriving to the work site, Simon is approached by a nurse inquiring if he was Jewish. Acknowledging this, she took him to a room that had been transformed into a sickroom for Karl, a dying SS soldier. Karl’s story began with his youth and Catholic upbringing and he joined the Hitler Youth and SS willingly. He then gave his account of the crime he committed and was so desperately seeking forgiveness for. Simon listened silently to the murder of more Jews and walked...
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