The Nazis Concentration camps and the Gulag camps demonstrated how humans could live through extreme situations. They each have survivors to tell of their terror, and they each have a massive death toll. Even though they differ in place and organization, they share some similarities. In Gulag Voices and Survival in Auschwitz, the authors write about what they witnessed and how they survived. The crucial way these memoirs differ is Survival in Auschwitz is written by one man’s experience; whereas, Gulag Voices contains the memoirs of a variety of people which creates a better mosaic of the camps. As much as they differ, it is also surprising how these memoirs share similarities as well. Hannah Arendt argues individuality does not exist in the concentration camps. Both of these books prove Arendt’s theory through the cold facts of the camps. An example of conformity is how the prisoners were minimized to a number in Auschwitz. Primo describes the tattoos placed on prisoners reflected their entry number, and the lower the number the longer they have been held prisoner. Hara Volovich’s story acts as evidence that the camp administrators tried to wipe individuality out from the birth. Volovich tells how porridge was shoved down the throats of the children to save time on feeding …show more content…
In Gulag Voices, Isaak Filshtinsky’s story is about a woman who is promoted until she because a powerful leader. This highlights the possibility of becoming free from the camp. Levi begins by believing he could have a better job in Auschwitz as well. Although Levi believes there are better jobs such as working as a chemist compared to hard labour, those ideas or hopes became false. “How can we still think about the chemistry examination and our illusions of that time?” This means that although both memoirs had a sense of hope that they could live better in the camps, only one memoir proved this
In “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” the author Tadeusz Borowski describes the systematic dehumanization of the camps and attempts to convey the horror of that places. Borowski uses lively and imaginal language, such as “multicoloured wave of people” and “pours from the train,” to depict how these people get off the train when they arrive the camp. Borowski successfully illustrates dehumanization not of new arrivals but of those who have been the camp. He depictures the ugliness of human in the concentration camp during World War II. Therefore, it seems that for those labor gang working in the camp were apathetic to this situation, and they just upload these Jews from the cattle cars and send them to their death in the gas chamber.
A prisoner in Auschwitz and a friend to Levi, Steinlauf, was a 40-year-old ex-Sargent of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Nonetheless he also was dealing with hunger, exhaustion, polluted water shortages, and trying to keep his humanity intact. He greets Levi in the washroom and notices that Levi explains he had began to see washing as a waste of energy and warmth because, “after half an hour with the coal sacks every difference between him and me will have disappeared.”(Levi, 40) Instead of washing he decides “to let myself live, to indulge myself in the luxury of an idle moment.”(Levi, 40) Steinlauf stops Levi explaining to him how important it is
...ing political parties there. Another thing that I learned from reading “Surviving Auschwitz” was the prisoners’ ability to acquire and trade goods between themselves. With such stringent and constant supervision, it amazes me that the prisoners still found a way to set up a sort of “black market” of their own. This illustrates beautifully the human ability to survive and improve our condition, even in the most unforgiving of environments. Quite honestly before reading, “Man is Wolf to Man”, I did not know that the Soviets even had prison camps. I also did not know the extent to which the Soviet army and government victimized their own people. The fact that many of the people in the Soviet Gulag were Soviets is astonishing to me. It baffles me to think about how any ruler of any nation could imprison his or her own people and wreak havoc on them for years and years.
In contrast, One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, wrote this novel to show the harsh inhuman behavior in the soviet camp. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is a valiant and hugely contentious novel. This is a work of fiction, but it is also a kind of journalistic novel that informs all about the gulag system. The ‘Gulags’ are the forced labor camps where millions of people are sent for crimes. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was writing about the ‘Gulag System’ under Joseph Stalin, the dictator who ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1952. During Stalin's reign of terror, millions of people were killed and millions were arrested and shipped off to gulags. Conditions in the Gulag were appalling and prisoners were used as slave labor. The people who survived the camps were often sent into forced exile afterwards. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had an actual understanding of the ‘Gulag System’. He was detained for writing a deprecating note about Stalin in a letter. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was detained i...
The Holocaust was one of the most atrocious genocides we have seen in human history, an atrocity where the Jewish people were persecuted through intense torture, murder, and unspeakable injustices. Through the holocaust, many writers were able to express their experience as survivors so that people would never forget this tragic event. Personally, there are three stories that helped me transport myself into the moment and understand the pain, suffering, and fears of the survivor. The three different authors mentioned in this paper will demonstrate vivid imagery, metaphors, and allusions that express their own personal experiences.
While first-hand accounts of terrible times are necessary in order to understand the horrors of the experience, it is often hard to get those who experienced it to come forward and give their story. This problem holds especially true for Holocaust survivors and their testimony. When the survivors do come forward it can be even more difficult to ensure that the account is both accurate and effective in telling the story. Luckily, there are those like Charlotte Delbo whose Holocaust account Auschwitz and After is able to use unique story telling strategies in order to create a compelling and clear testimony. Despite Theodor Adorno’s claim “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” Charlotte Delbo’s usage of poetry and prose as a vehicle
Many authors fraudulently claim a piece of history as their own stories in order gain popularity. This is the case with many Holocaust memoirs. Authors turn history and facts into a fictional playing field, which they believe they can use to tell their “stories.” Although the Holocaust was a very serious, dramatic, and depressing time in history, certain authors see it as a way to grasp an audience’s attention. The authors tell a story of their lives transforming from despair to happiness; however, in order to keep this type of work from being seen as a cliché, in which everything turns out perfectly in the end, they attach dates, places, and facts. Misha Defonseca took advantage of the Holocaust’s shocking tales by creating her own fake memoir called Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years. The factual truth of these events does matter because the truth aspect of the memoir is what gives it its extra meaning and importance, so without the truth, such a story loses some value.
Throughout the novel “Night” by author Elie Wiesel and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, readers are given a look at what it was like to live in the concentration camps and gulags during the time period of World War II. In Night, Wiesel focused on detailing the everyday struggles that men, women, and children had to endure while living in the concentration camps. However, in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn placed his focus on exactly what it says in the title – one day. Every event mentioned in the text happened in one single day and was used to give readers the impression that each day after that would consist of the same routines and triumphs. Although these novels are very similar, they both depicted themes – such as dehumanization and survival – in many different ways.
Political prisoners and criminals alike were subject to brutal conditions in the Soviet gulags at Kolyma in the 20th century. In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, the stories of many different prisoners are told and much is revealed about how humans react under these pressures, both naturally and socially. Being in an extreme environment not only takes a toll on one’s physical well-being, but on one’s mental and emotional state as well. The stories show that humans can be reduced to a fragile, animalistic state while in the Kolyma work camps because the extreme conditions force many men to focus solely on self-preservation.
Perhaps most strikingly, the latter part of the book questions why the Gulag system was met with a historical collective amnesia from not only the Soviet Union, but the West as well. The author discusses the social, economic, and political history of the Gulag system. Her poignant novel
Schwartz, Leslie. Surviving the hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: a teenage struggle toward freedom from hatred.. S.l.: Lit Verlag, 2013. Print.
Compare “The Great Escape”, the real-life testimonies, and the memoirs from the Gulag is helpful in order to recognize similarities and differences between the culture of the Gulag and the Holocaust. Often, those in the Gulag who tried to escape were punished or sentenced to death. In “The Gulag Archipelago,” written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, his experiences within the forced labor prison camp system are depicted. On page 586, he states, “They used to deliver orders like this: ‘One step out of line and the convoy guard will shoot and slash!’ That had a very powerful sound: ‘shoot and slash!’ You could imagine them cutting your head from behind.” Similar conditions followed those who attempted to step out of line within the Holocaust labor camp system. In a testimony given by POW survivor Van Wymeersch, he states, “A few days later a list of those who had been shot was pinned up on the Compound notice board. It gave forty-seven names. Three more names were added later,” (Tuck & Grehan 214). Just as Solzhenitsyn’s memoir depicts the consequences of attempting to escape the Gulag, Wymeersch depicts the realities of those 50 prisoners of war who faced the consequences of attempting to escape Stalag Luft III. The same pattern is recognized in the film “The Great Escape,” especially in the scene where the character of Ives attempts to cross the barbed wire. When attempting to escape, Ives is shot to death, leaving him brutally killed and hanging on the barbed wire. Both the Gulag and the Holocaust consisted of detrimental consequences and treatment, and although some conditions were different, those imprisoned maintained the same outlook on life in their
Setting out with his arrest by the fascist militia in December of 1943, the text conforms to Primo Levi’s experience in the succeeding twelve months as an inmate in the National Socialists’ Monowitz- Buna concentration camp, seven kilometers east of Auschwitz. Upon arriving in the camp, the first-person narrator, Primo Levi, who holds a doctorate in chemistry, embarks on a world that renders him astonished; simply by making literary notes to Dante’s Inferno can he manage to draw its contours. After the degrading intake procedures, he actualizes that the objective of the place to which they have been brought is the psychological and physical devastation of the inmates. Inmate Levi, “Number 174517,” discovers more about the camp and the inhumane circumstances there....
The Nazi’s Warsaw ghetto brought out the worst in many people. Crammed into a few blocks with little to eat or drink, people were forced to fight for their survival. Some were affected worse than others—betraying family members and friends for a bite to eat was not uncommon. However, not everyone bore their worst. For a very few people, the dark times drove them to be the best they could, to fight tooth and nail for their people’s survival. They did not lose themselves and shrink to mere husks of their former selves—they remained strong and with resolve. Nowhere is this contrast more evident than between the two good friends Paul Bronski and Andrei Androfski. While Paul withered away as a person, unable to handle his great burden, Andrei rose to the challenge, standing as a beacon of hope and resolve to all.
Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish Anti-fascist who was arrested in 1943, during the Second World War. The memoir, “If this is a Man”, written immediately after Levi’s release from the Auschwitz concentration camp, not only provides the readers with Levi’s personal testimony of his experience in Auschwitz, but also invites the readers to consider the implications of life in the concentration camp for our understanding of human identity. In Levi’s own words, the memoir was written to provide “documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind”. The lack of emotive words and the use of distant tone in Levi’s first person narration enable the readers to visualize the cold, harsh reality in Auschwitz without taking away the historical credibility. Levi’s use of poetic and literary devices such as listing, repetition, and symbolism in the removal of one’s personal identification; the use of rhetorical questions and the inclusion of foreign languages in the denial of basic human rights; the use of bestial metaphors and choice of vocabulary which directly compares the prisoner of Auschwitz to animals; and the use of extended metaphor and symbolism in the character Null Achtzehn all reveal the concept of dehumanization that was acted upon Jews and other minorities.