Silence

The holocaust is an unforgettable event that marked and changed the lives of millions of people. The suffering, the pain, the heartache cannot be taken back, but the memories will remain and the healing will come.
The Jews were deeply affected by the decisions Hitler made. How is it even possible for a man to have so much hatred for another human being? How can a man like him have so much power? According to Hitler, the Jews were over growing and taking over companies, shops, and banks. If the Germans needed anything like a loan, food, or clothes; they had to go the banks and stores that were owned by Jews, and apparently Hitler did not like that. So he convinced almost all of Europe that the Jews were unpleasant people because they were taking over everything. I do not really think the other people had noticed that Jews were taking over until Hitler brought it to their attention. He was being a self-centered, and selfish man. He could not stand the fact that the Jews were becoming more successful than the Germans. Hitler did not care about hurting innocent people. He just wanted to get rid of them because to him they were an “abomination.” How was he able to see the Jews being murdered and thrown out of their homes without feeling a bit of remorse? It seemed he had made his heart become like a hard cold stone.
Being silent is taking away your freedom of speech. It takes away more than freedom of speech, it also stops people from expressing what they feel. Hitler did more than kill millions of Jews; he took their liberty and most importantly their freedom of expressing themselves. Hitler had everything planned out and organized on how he was going to take out the Jews. As he started taking over Europe the Jews started loosing their freedom. There were adolescent Jews who during the war they wrote a diary about everything they felt, and everything they wanted to say because they could not speak it in public. In the film I’m still here there is quote by an unknown little girl from Poland who wrote in her diary that says, “You have to be quiet even though your heart is breaking.” This little girl could not have been more than twelve or thirteen years old, and this is what she is feeling. She was starving, and tired of everything that was going on. She more than likely felt defense less. If the Jews were to start a riot or a protest they will more than likely die, so in order for them to stay alive longer they kept everything in. The words this girl wrote say a lot more than words alone can explain. She was really hurting and broken.
As a result of Hitler’s decision, many families were also separated. Like Peter and Eva. They were both young when they got separated from their parents and each other. By the time they are 14 years old they are together, but only for a short period of time because Peter gets taken away to the concentration camps and dies in gas chambers in Auschwitz. His sister Eva is really heart broken when they take her brother. Eva and her parents did survive the holocaust; it was only Peter who did not make it. Being separated from a family member is the hardest thing everyone went through. Mothers and fathers being separated from their children was the saddest thing they could have gone through.
There are others holocaust survivors like Miriam Kober, who during the war she wrote in her diary that she wished to be dead instead of suffering in the hands of the Germans. Everything that she had been going through more than likely had left her without hope and it might seem that she felt guilt for being alive while many others had died. Elsa Binder unfortunately she did not survive the holocaust, but wrote in her diary that she had no hate, but pain. Her only question to Hitler was “Why?”
These Jews may not have been able to express their thoughts and feelings out in public, but they certainly did on paper. They also did not think that maybe one day their diaries would be found, shown, and read to millions of people. They thought that their diaries were just pieces of paper where they expressed what they felt and that it would not matter after they died.