World War II was and still is the most deadly war of all time, leaving 60 million people dead and countless others injured. It involved several nations, but left an impression on almost all nations worldwide. One word that often resonates from the thought of World War II is “holocaust.” It is something that, to this day, is taught in schools and is an important, yet tragic part of history. There are multiple famous pieces of literature that capture just how horrendous this war was, and some of the most impactful pieces are the ones written at the time of the war from someone’s perspective. Readers are able to view Paris just as it was during World War II through Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise. This book depicts what life was like in France in the 1940s, and…
On July 16, 1942, the Vichy government ordered that all Jews were to be arrested and sent off to concentration camps. It was the biggest operation of its kind during the German occupation of France in World War II. Despite the misconception that the Germans were basically the main anti-Semites in Europe, the French also showed a large contribution as well through the Vélodrome d’Hiver Roundup in 1942. The French clearly displayed anti-Semitism by rounding the Jews up themselves instead of the Germans, cramming the Jews into the Vélodrome d’Hiver stadium and sending them to horrible concentration camps.…
1. FUNDER’S STASILAND ALSO DEMONSTRATES OTHER VICTIMS STORIES, AND HOW THEY WERE EQUALLY VANDALIZED BY THE MONSTER OF THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICS TORTURE AND STRICT RULES AND REGULATIONS, SUCH AS THE TALE OF JULIA BEHREND, A CHILD OF THE STASI REGIME WHO WAS ALSO PLAGUED BY THE BERLIN WALL TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS BORN INTO THE GDR. MAKING HER A PURE CITIZEN. ( JULIA BEHREND, MIRIAM WEBER )…
The feelings of anxiety, deception and suspense are three of the many words used to describe the Holocaust. Source B revealed how genocide was demonstrated in the Holocaust by providing evidence of classification and preparation. Likewise, Source C, a poem written by Pastor Neimoller, in which he describes the fear that the people felt when groups of Jews were disappearing each day. The day they came for them there was no one left to take a stand for the minority. In a similar way Source D, “The Terrible Things” by Eve Bunting, delivers a similar explanation by a group called “The Terrible Things” that caught groups of animals living in the forest one by one. Although when they came for the rabbits there were no other animals left to stand up for them. Exposing to us how in a similar way the Nazi’s would diminish the Jews rights though they had done nothing and no one said nor did a thing to prevent it. Therefore, the segregation of the Jewish people, also known as the Holocaust, is identified as the responsibility of the people.…
Donald L. Niewyk’s fifth and sixth chapters both deal more with outside perspectives and outside reactions than it does with those who were persecuted. The fifth chapter, “Bystander Reactions,” offers four different arguments as to why bystanders acted they way they did during the Holocaust. The sixth chapter, “Possibilities of Rescue,” discusses three different viewpoints on what foreign governments could have done to prevent the Holocaust. These two chapters conclude Niewyk’s book The Holocaust and wrap up the final sequence of events surrounding the Holocaust and the camps.…
Survival in Auschwitz written by Primo Levi is a first-hand description of the atrocities which took place in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. The book provides an explicit depiction of camp life: the squalor, the insufficient food supply, the seemingly endless labour, cramped living space, and the barter-based economy which the prisoners lived. Levi through use of his simple yet powerful words outlined the motive behind Auschwitz, the tactical dehumanization and extermination of Jews. This paper will discuss experiences and reactions of Jews who labored in Auschwitz, and elaborate on the pre-Auschwitz experiences of Jews who were deported to Auschwitz and gassed to death on their arrival, which had not been included in Survival in Auschwitz.…
Between Dignity and Despair, a book written by Marion A. Kaplan, published in 1998, gives us a portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany by the astounding memoirs, diaries, interviews with survivors, and letters of Jewish women and men. The book is written in chronological order of events, from the daily life of German Jewish families prior to when the Holocaust began to the days when rights were completely taken away; from the beginning of forced labor and exile to the repercussion of the war. Kaplan tries to include details from each significant event during the time of the Holocaust. Kaplan tells us the story of Jews in Germany not from the perception of the Holocaust, but by focusing on the persecutors from the confused and vague viewpoint of Jews trying to direct their lives on a day to day basis in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Kaplan shows us that the Holocaust was impossible to predict exactly because Nazi oppression occurred in random and impulsive steps until the massive violence of November 1938. Between Dignity and Despair focuses on the destiny of families and mostly women’s experience, taking the reader into neighborhoods, kitchens, shops, schools and it gives us form and consistency. It is giving us the exact impression of what life was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany, except we are sitting behind the book taking it all in.…
Atrocities during the Holocaust, orchestrated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, began in 1933 and continued until 1945. In 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto located in Warsaw, Poland was created by Nazis to isolate the Jews off from the outer population. This began a time of fear and uncertainty for the ghetto inhabitants, which eventually sparked an uprising. Personal accounts help illustrate this disturbing time in history. The stories shared by survivors are critical for appreciating this dark time, which must never be forgotten. The Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants endured an inhuman lifestyle inside these walls fueling an organized resistance, unprecedented during the Holocaust, proving that the Jews when pushed to their limits, will fight back.…
As the dust settled in Europe, collaborators were hung, sent running naked down the streets or imprisoned, while the resistance set out to define post-war Europe. The illusion of a clear distinction between Hitler’s henchmen and enemies shaped the psychology, language and power structures that are still present today. Collaboration and resistance, as categories of human behaviour, gained their historical relevance from the weight they carried after the war, rather than the limited part they played in bringing the conflict to an end. In reality, the decision to collaborate was, as choices always are, the individual’s response to his or hers perceived alternatives. It existed within every stratum, and along the entire scale of what is considered good and evil. It came in endless variations, and due to as many motivations. I will, however, argue that self-interest was the most important motivating factor. To avoid exaggerated emphasis on those in charge, I will return to the so called horizontal collaborators, who were often the first to be punished. Not only are their stories as personal as they can get, but their motivations can, with a tiny bit of imagination, be applied to every chunk of society. Also, in order to remain focused on the driving force behind collaboration, I will base my argument on the most crucial motivating factors: self preservation; the dissatisfaction with previous institutions; the common enemy; internal conflict; ideological similarities; and self-interest.…
Survival in Auschwitz tells of the horrifying and inhuman conditions of life in the Auschwitz death camp as personally witnessed and experienced by the author, Primo Levi. Levi is an Italian Jew and chemist, who at the age of twenty-five, was arrested with an Italian resistance group and sent to the Nazi Auschwitz death camp in Poland in the end of 1943. For ten terrible months, Levi endured the cruel and inhuman death camp where men slaved away until it was time for them to die. Levi thoroughly presents the hopeless existence of the prisoners in Auschwitz, whose most basic human rights were stripped away, when in Chapter 2 he states, "Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself" (27). With Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi provides a stark examination of human survival in the dehumanized society of a Nazi death camp. Throughout the book, Levi reinforces the theme that the prisoners of the death camp are reduced to being no longer men, but instead animals that must struggle to survive day by day or face certain death.…
Elie Wiesel, a former prisoner of Auschwitz, once said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” Auschwitz was a camp set up by Nazis in the early 1940s and more than 12,000 people died a day there. Who did Auschwitz affect? What happened there? How did it start? Auschwitz was a camp for many more than just Jewish people.…
“…Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same…
We must first realize that resistance was in no way a survival strategy. Yet, even when it seemed obvious that death was near inevitable, why did they not put up a fight? This argument is still puzzling to many holocaust historians, yet the arguments of Raul Hilberg and Yehuda Bauer offer insight to possible reasons why they did not fight and that resistance was more widespread than most people think.…
Approximately one year before World War II started, in late 1938 a power hungry-dictator caused such an event it's remembered throughout history. The Holocaust was one of the world’s darkest hours, a mass murder conducted in the shadows of the world’s most deadly war. The German government controlled by the brutal Nazi Party and its leader Adolf Hitler. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis, who came to power in Germany on January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.…
Auschwitz, the most infamous concentration camps during the Holocaust, was built as an extermination centre by the Nazi Party for all Jews, non-Aryans, communists, and anyone that Hitler believed were not a part of this "perfect race". After its establishment, countless monstrosities had taken place in this very camp. Moreover, many captives were obliged to do hard labour in the factories. Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, came up with numerous methods to exterminate all Jews and others. Additionally, being constructed on an isolated area had allowed Auschwitz to function regularly without anyone discovering the atrocity of the camp and stopping it. Establishing Auschwitz was a very effective way of killing the Nazi oppositions, which tremendously…