Fuel…. Flame…. Fire…. Inferno…. Ash…. Historically, the word holocaust meant a religious rite in which an offering was completely consumed by fire. In current times the word holocaust has changed to a darker more tragic meaning and refers to more than a religious sacrifice. During World War II, a fire raged throughout Eastern Europe. Guns, bombs, and military groups did not ignite this fire. This fire burned intensely in the hearts of men -- sparked by centuries-old prejudice. One man, Adolf Hitler, took this flicker of hatred and fanned the flames. Hitler energized and stoked the embers, spreading them throughout Eastern Europe causing widespread destruction in the pursuit of a perfect Aryan nation. Although the Holocaust is measured over the course of twelve long years, it does not begin with the mass murder of innocent victims. Michael Berenbaum, a survivor of the Holocaust believes, "Age-old prejudice led to discrimination, discrimination to incarceration, incarceration to elimination" (Altman 1). Thus, the progression of prejudice in the Holocaust began as a flicker of hatred in the heart of a leader and became a blazing inferno consuming the lives of the men, women, and children who crossed its radical path.
After World War I, the social climate in Germany was depressing. The German people were humiliated by their country's defeat and by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The financial depression that resulted left millions of individuals out of work. The German government was weak, and the people sought new leadership. These conditions provided an opportune setting for a new leader, Adolf Hitler, and his party, the National Socialist German Workers Party. Hitler, reckless and powerful, was able to fan the flames of an ancient hatred into a wild and out of control holocaust (Altman 12).
As with most hatred and prejudices, the hatred that fueled the Holocaust started with verbal abuse. As soon as Hitler was named chancellor, he persuaded the cabinet to declare a state of emergency allowing him to end all personal freedom. Among the rights lost were freedom of press, freedom of speech, and freedom of gathering. He then voiced his beliefs in the supreme "Aryan" race. As his beliefs spread, spoken or verbal abuse escalated. Those who were not considered to be of the perfect "Aryan" race were jeered and mocked. Fred Margulies, a survivor of the Holocaust, recalls: " When I was about ten years old there was a knock on my apartment-house door: and there was my best friend, Hans.
“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities […] because it is the quality that guarantees all others” (Winston Churchill). This quote attests to the importance of the courage portrayed in The Help and Water for Elephants and emphasizes why courage is a defining trait of the characters. In both novels, the characters are confined and put through pain and suffering but in the end demonstrate tremendous amounts of courage in order to overcome their oppression. In The Help, the coloured help are confined to living life in an era full of racism, they are put through pain and suffering by the way they are treated by their employers and the members of their community. The characters demonstrate
In 1990, there was a total of 2,245 murders in New York, but over the past nine years, this total has been less than 600 (NYCLU). However, there has not been evident proof that the stop-and-frisk procedure is the reason of the declination of the crime rate. Indeed, stop-and-frisk contributes to some downturn of crime but the number is not high enough for the citizen and police to rely on. Specifically, only 3% of 2.4 million stops result in conviction. Some 2% of those arrests – or 0.1% of all stops – led to a conviction for a violent crime. Only 2% of arrests led to a conviction for possession of a weapon (Gabatt, A., 2013). In other words, the decrease in crime due to stop-and-frisk is mostly due to the discovery of possessed of weapons. Therefore, stop-and- frisk is not an effective procedure to use because it does not represent a huge impact in people’s safety (Gabatt, A., 2013). The author has done research about how police base their initiation towards the procedure of stop-and-frisk. Researchers have found that stop-and-frisk is a crime prevention strategy that gives a police officer the permission to stop a person based on “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity and frisk based on “reasonable suspicion” that the person is armed and dangerous. This controversy is mainly because of racial profiling. “Reasonable suspicion” was described by the court as “common sense” (Avdija, A., 2013). Although, the
Gruen, Sara. Water for Elephants: a novel. Chapel Hill, North Carolina.: Algonquin Books, 2006. Print.
Even though there is tragedy there-what Steinbeck seems to be saying is that the human spirit can and will endure despite immense privations. The will to live and endure will always overcome defeated hopes.
Everyone has an American dream, a belief that represents anyone can carry out a higher quality life through hard labor, and finding happiness at the end. These people work their lives to fulfill a dream that seems impossible, but in the end they either succeed or fail. Despite the odds, people still dive into this idea not knowing how it will end. By taking risks in life, they have a higher chance of achieving this dream of theirs. It ultimately shapes their character and spirit. Stopping at no extent, they make sacrifices to meet their main goal. This dream is put to the test in Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, which takes place during the Great Depression causing George and Lennie, mentally disabled friend, to have a hopeless American dream. Their dream ultimately shapes their character and spirit, inspiring them to achieving this dream, but others dreams are crushed due to the Great Depression; similarly Steinbeck suggests that the American dream is unattainable due to the time setting, Great Depression.
The American Dream started off as propaganda in order to make the American people of the early twentieth century work harder to build a successful economy. The idea of the American Dream is that every American citizen has an equal opportunity of making money along with owning a large house, some land, and having a family with kids. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck illustrates that the American Dream, no matter how simple is impossible to achieve. As everyone has their own interpretation of the American Dream, Steinbeck uses George and Lennie, Crooks, and Curley’s Wife to demonstrate how the American Dream is impossible to achieve and how important the dream was for people so they could carry on with their lives.
There are times in history when desperate people plagued by desperate situations blindly give evil men power. These men, once given power, have only their own evil agendas to carry out. The Holocaust was the result of one such man's agenda. In short simplicity, shear terror, brutality, inhumanity, injustice, irresponsibility, immorality, stupidity, hatred, and pure evil are but a few words to describe the Holocaust.
Each year thousands of Americans are stopped by the police in order to be questioned and frisked. Everyone understands that each stop, question and frisk encounter violated the established constitutional rights. The legal issues which refer to the Stop, Question, and Frisk policy are associated with violation of certain rules that create a debate regarding the validity of the practices. The controversial Stop, Question, and Frisk practices require thorough investigation. It is illegal to aggressively stop and question American citizens who merely enter public places. In many cases, law enforcement personnel uses creative ways to stop, question and frisk people who have shown no evidence of being involved in criminal activity. For example, the New York Police Department’s “Operation Clean Halls” has been used since 1991 allowing local police officers to conduct the so-called “vertical patrols” by providing well-organized stop-and-frisk searches in hallways of public buildings (Mathias, 2012). Actually, the Stop, Question, and Frisk practiced in New York City by the City Police Department stands for the legal procedure, which requires stop and question thousands of people, as well as frisk them for weapons, drugs and other contraband. In fact, the Stop,
The Holocaust is defined as destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war. Following 1945, the word has taken on a new meaning referring to the mass slaughtering of millions of European Jews as well as other persecuted groups (gypsies and homosexuals), by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. In Europe the Jews experienced anti-Semitism (hostility or prejudice against Jews) which dated back to the ancient world, to the time when the Jewish temples were destroyed and they were forced to leave Palestine by Roman authorities. This wide-spread hatred of the Jews augmented the virulent mindset behind the Holocaust.
Racial Profiling or stop and frisking highly occur in the state of New York. The New York City’s Police Department stop and frisk practices raise serious concerns over racial profiling, privacy rights, and illegal stops. The police are stopping hundreds of thousands of law abiding New Yorkers every year, and the vast 84 percent of the stops are black and Latino. People say that stop and frisks are reasonable because they help reduce crime and protect citizens, but stop and frisks do not reduce crime rates and do not keep people safer. There has never been a research that has proven the effectiveness of New York City’s stop and frisk tactic, and the small number of arrests, summonses, and guns recovered demonstrates that the practice is ineffective. Crime Statistics also do not support the claim that New York City is safer because of...
It was in December 1948, when it was approved unanimous the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at France which became the 260th resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations. What made the leaders of the 41 States create and sign this document in which the term Genocide was legally defined? This document serves as a permanent reminder of the actions made by the Nazis and their leader Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust where more than five million of European Jews were killed. In summary I will explain what were the events that leaded the ordinary Germans kill more than six million Jews in less than five years. To achieve this goal, I will base my arguments on the Double Spiral Degeneration Model provided by Doctor Olson during the spring semester of the Comparative Genocide class.
Genocide is one of the most frightening terms one could hear, sending shivers down your spine just to hear the word. Genocide is the intent of extermination of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. One of the best known Genocide’s to the world is known as the Holocaust. Germans exterminated over 6 million Jews in just a couple of years. Families were torn apart, and some of the worst things you could ever do to a human being were done in these times. After the Holocaust everyone said Never Again, but it has happened over and over. If we follow the steps to preventing genocides, we can stop history from repeating itself and keep the people of the world safe.
The Holocaust is a subject familiar to most people around the world. They either learned about it in school or on TV. The word “Holocaust” comes from the Greek words “holos” and “kaustos. “Holos” which means whole and the word “kaustos” meaning burned. Originally it is historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Throughout history the word has taken a whole different meaning. The modern definition of the word means the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews and other groups by the German Nazi “regime” during World War ll (History, 2016). The Holocaust was one of the darkest times for both Germany and the Jews who were targeted because Hitler believed that they didn’t meet his standards that would compromise
Another example of symbolism used in the story is when the shapeless splotch of white hair on the black cat is signified as a structure to hang criminals, bringing the narrator into madness by the cat’s physique, During one night drunk at a tavern, the narrator who had just finished off Pluto finds a cat who looked exactly like the one he had killed, but with a minor difference, just a white shapeless splotch on its breast. Noticing its affection for him, he took the cat in as his pet, but soon found himself being annoyed by it, and then that feeling turned into hatred. However, he still kept it as a pet until he nervously and frantically realized the white splotch actually meant. He said, “This object, above all, made me hate and dread the monster. I would have gotten rid of it had I
Steinbeck portrays to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of his argument; how the Great Depression affected individuals and their own American Dreams. Steinbeck uses allusion to show the reader that “ the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”, Archetype to show the prejudice attitudes towards each group of people during the great depression, and lastly foreshadowing to hint to the readers what will happen throughout the novella. Through the use of these devices Steinbeck is able to capture the image of the “American Dream” and portray how certain characters were truly