At the entrance to each death camp, there was a process of Selektion or selection. Pregnant women, small children, the sick or handicapped, and the elderly were immediately condemned to death. As horrific as it was, it didn’t surprise many that Hitler had the audacity to do these terrible things. The Holocaust was an act of genocide in which Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany killed about two thirds of the population of Jews in Europe from 1941-1945 but the trouble started brewing much before that. Though there were only a small amount of survivors, very few alive to this day, there are many pieces of literature that help prove that this in fact happened. Literature can help us remember and honor the victims of the Holocaust because, it gives different
The Holocaust was a period approximately in the same period of the Nazi Party’s power in Germany, and around the length of World War II. It began with just a simple persecution of a minority, but eventually in the later stages of the war it became something much more horrific and detestable. The Nazi Party sent Jews from all of Europe that it controlled into brutal death camps to be exterminated in one of the most bone-chillingly effective attempts at exterminating a people in all of human history. The dehumanized people in those camps died en masse, and the Jewish people are still recovering from the effects of this genocide. In the utterly grave situation during the Holocaust that people found themselves in, it is ironic that this was how
In history there is no true justice, just death, in the case of the Holocaust, much death. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel describes his life of a fourteen year old religious Jewish boy, who was sent to Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp, where he lost both his faith and his family. In 1933, Adolf Hitler began putting Jews and other “despicable” ethnic groups into concentration camps and blaming them for the problems Germany was facing after World War I, then in 1941, Hitler put in place the “Final Solution”, a Nazi plan centered around killing all Jews. Through the atrocities detailed in Night, Elie Wiesel proves the dehumanizing effects of the Holocaust for the victims.
The Holocaust was one of the most horrific and dehumanizing occurrences that the human race has ever endured. It evolved around cruelty, hatred, death, destruction and prejudice. Thousands of innocent lives were lost in Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jewish population. He killed thousands of Jews by way of gas chamber, crematorium, and starvation. The people who managed to survive in the concentration camps were those who valued not just their own life but others as well. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author of the novel, Night, expressed his experiences very descriptively throughout his book. When Elie was just fifteen years old his family was shipped off
“ Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky” - Elie Wiesel. The holocaust is the biggest massacre in history to take place. It occured in Germany starting in 1933 and lasting until 1945. 1.5 million children alone died in the holocaust. But one child from the holocaust lived to tell his tale. His name is Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel, author of the nonfiction novel Night, was a real holocaust survivor. In this book, he shares his story to the world. One touchy topic shown through the holocaust is dehumanization. The idea that a greater power could take the souls of many lives is absurd. Elie Wiesel uses the novel Night to show the dehumanization the nazis brought upon
The Holocaust was a systematic extermination of nearly six-million Jews. Holocaust means ‘Sacrifice by Fire’. Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat to achieve approval and success. Elie Wiesel was a twelve year old Jewish boy from Sighet. The Hungarian police came to his town, put up a fence, and kept them inside the ghetto. Life inside the ghetto consisted of their everyday life. They just continued it between fence walls. A few weeks after the ghetto life started, the Jews of Sighet were transported to a smaller ghetto. A few days passed when the Hungarian police shuttled them into cattle cars- about eighty to a car. “Lying down was not an option, nor could we sit down” (Wiesel 23). The train ride was long and crowded. “Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire” (Wiesel 24)! During the train ride a women cried out to warn the others what she is seeing. The people on the train panicked and had men quiet her down. They reached the most notorious camp that killed ninety-six hundred thousand Jews.
By comparing, analyzing and questioning the validity of Maus I and II, Night, Night and Fog, nonfictional historical accounts and a poem, called Already Embraced by the Arm of Heavenly Solace, found in Europe in the Contemporary World, Schindler’s List and the Return to Auschwitz we may determine to what degree these sources serve to advance humanity’s understanding of the holocaust. The holocaust can be explained as the historical event in which the Nazi’s, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, and its collaborators murdered and persecuted approximately six million Jews. This came about because of the German belief that they were “racially superior” and the Jews were an alien threat to the German state. For humanity to advance in
The Holocaust resulted in the death of millions of innocent people, all of whom included Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and dissidents to the Nazi regime. Survivors of the Holocaust recorded countless memoirs and stories that revealed the brutality and torture experienced in the concentration camps. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, wrote his memoir Night to recount his horrific experience in the camps. Images of starving children, death marches, and severe punishment inflicted on innocent prisoners explain the horrific Holocaust recounted by Wiesel. These are crimes against humanity, but they are instances of dehumanization, the reduction of a human being to a lesser being.
The holocaust is one of the world's most tragic events, approximately 6 million Jews died and the concentration camp Auschwitz is the world's largest human cemetery, yet it has no graves. In Elie Wiesel's autobiographical memoir Night, he writes about his dehumanizing journey in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Firstly, Elie experiences the loss of love and belonging when he is separated from his mother, sisters, and eventually his father. Also, the lack of respect that the Nazis showed the prisoners which lead to the men, including Elie to feel a sense of worthlessness in the camp. Finally, the lack of basic necessities in the camp leads to the men physically experiencing dehumanization. As a result, all these factors contribute to the
The Holocaust was the genocide of approximately six million people of innocent Jewish decent by the Nazi government. The Holocaust was a very tragic time in history due to the idealism that people were taken from their surroundings, persecuted and murdered due to the belief that German Nazi’s were superior to Jews. During the Holocaust, many people suffered both physically and mentally. Tragic events in people’s lives cause a change in their outlook on the world and their future. Due to the tragic events that had taken place being deceased in their lives, survivors often felt that death was a better option than freedom.
The Holocaust is widely known as one of the most horrendous and disturbing events in history that the world has seen; over six million lives were lost, in fact the total number of deceased during the Holocaust has never been determined. The footage of concentration camps and gas chambers left the world in utter shock, but photos and retellings of the events cannot compare to being a victim of the Holocaust and living through the horror that the rest of the world regarded in the safety of their homes. Elie Wiesel recognized the indifference that the
As Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel once said, “To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice,” that is why we are called to remember. Many movies, novels, and story representations of the Holocaust have been created in order to spread the memory of the past. An important part of remembering is learning, and therefore not repeating the same mistakes once again. Movies may find it difficult to represent the Holocaust accurately, while also giving it meaning and artistic expression. The writer, Edwin de Vries, and the director, Jeroen Krabbé, strive to represent the legacies of the Holocaust and Jewish culture in the film, Left Luggage (1998), based on a novel by Carl Friedman through a portrayal of the daily lives of Holocaust survivors and their children in late 1960s Antwerp, their direct confrontations with their memories of the Holocaust, and character development. The film shows us many examples of the legacy of the Holocaust as it is passed through the children of survivors, and how it continues to affect their daily lives. The audience understands the intentions through depictions of muteness and the necessity to remember.
During the reign of the Third Reich, the symbolization of the pink triangle was used to identify the thousands of gay prisoners who were sent to extermination camps under Paragraph 175, the law that criminalized homosexuality between men. Researchers say that an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 gay men died in these camps, however this figure does not include those who were interned and later released, let alone those who died undocumented and forever forgotten to history.¹ These thousands of men were forced through excruciating cruelties with little to no reprieve or recognition of the atrocities perpetrated against them. It is because of this that while they are not a distinct racial, ethnic, or religious group, the treatment of those who bore the pink triangle during the Holocaust follows the genocidal process and as such gay Holocaust victims should be considered sufferers of genocide.
Elizabeth Feldman –de Jang and Nathan Nothman are both survivors of the Holocaust, but just like every individual survivor, they share different stories. One of the few things that may unite them is the specific fact that they are both Jewish and despite all odds, they managed to survive and share their stories.
Imagine yourself being born as a Jew in the time of the Holocaust. Being forced to go into hiding, and go every day not knowing what will come next, living in fear of being captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. The Holocaust was a time in period when a guy named Adolf Hitler came into power of being the leader of the Nazis. The Nazis rounded and relocated nearly 1 million Jews from all across Europe to forced labor camps and extermination camps. There were different ways they got rid of the Jews. A quarter of the Jews were worked to death. The rest were sent immediately to gas chambers to be killed. Literature helps us remember and honor the victims of the Holocaust by reading and seeing all the suffering they went through.
Many victims of the Holocaust, regardless of race, endured the same unethical punishment for having what the Nazi’s believed to be wrong beliefs. Though Jewish people were the main target by the Nazi’s, groups such as homosexuals, Gypsies, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also targeted. Locations that these people were imprisoned in varied from prisons to killing camps. There were multiple concentration camps, but certain ones had a greater importance due to their location, such as Sachsenhausen and Dachau, which were both located in Germany, which was where Hitler wished to rid the Jews from. Many prisoners of these concentration camps suffered the same fate, but it is important to know as many of their stories as possible. Karl-Heinz Kusserow, a Jehovah’s Witness during the Holocaust, faced imprisonment for refusing German authorities, faced hardships of the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, and was released from Dachau in 1945.