Acute pains shot spasmodically through me, starting at my knees and winding through my body. I craned my neck, only to see the brownshirt sneering at my torment. He had told me many hours before that my interrogation would be soon, but soon never came. Now I lay on the stone floor, my eyelids becoming dangerously heavy and cold consuming my mind. The brownshirt gave a satisfied, thin-lipped smile as I rubbed my hands together. ‘Your confession, Herr Eisenberg?’ he inquired. I shook my head and let out a ragged choke as the brownshirt hit me again. I knew I could not let him know about Edith and Greta. ‘You are hiding a Jew! Why don’t you admit your wrongs, you fool!’ he roared, but caught himself. ‘No harm will come to you,’ he cooed.
I nearly laughed despite myself. Did the Gestapo really believe that we were oblivious to the camps? ‘Laughing traitor?’ he sneered, his bright blue eyes widening in fury. ‘What kind of German are you?’ he asked, his voice becoming dangerously quiet. ‘Betraying Germany? You’re broken!’ …
… I stared at what had once been a shop window. Garments had been torn from their mannequins. Splintered glass lined the front. The cracked mirror reflected the seething hatred of Kristallnacht. Some walked past, smirking and kicking at the glass. Others passed without even acknowledging it. A troop of Hitler Youth walked by, merely glancing at the wreckage. I choked back a gasp and briskly walked on. In the distance, I saw tendrils of smoke spiralling through the air. My chest tightened as I witnessed the sight before me. The synagogue had once been a magnificent building adorned with stained glass windows. Now its rounded top had caved in and coloured shards of glass surrounded the building like a barrier. Charred ...
... middle of paper ...
... open. She peered at me dubiously, as if she couldn’t quite believe I was there. ‘I thought you didn’t want to mix with the likes of me,’ she murmured. We were both remembering how I would conspicuously tell Edith about how we should not be contaminating the master race. I imagined waking up outside my worst enemy’s ruthless followers and I felt seized with terror. I simply smiled sadly at her and returned to bed…
… I watched helplessly as the brownshirt turned the telephone dial. When he finished the call, he dragged me through the door and pointed in the direction of the jail. ‘You will stay there for the night. Then you will be disposed of at Buchenwald with all the other human rubbish.’ I nodded nervously. ‘Heil Hitler!’ His arm shot out like an arrow.
‘Heil Hitler,’ I answered feebly.
I tried to block the screams coming from behind me as I walked towards fate.
The atrocities of war can take an “ordinary man” and turn him into a ruthless killer under the right circumstances. This is exactly what Browning argues happened to the “ordinary Germans” of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the mass murders and deportations during the Final Solution in Poland. Browning argues that a superiority complex was instilled in the German soldiers because of the mass publications of Nazi propaganda and the ideological education provided to German soldiers, both of which were rooted in hatred, racism, and anti-Semitism. Browning provides proof of Nazi propaganda and first-hand witness accounts of commanders disobeying orders and excusing reservists from duties to convince the reader that many of the men contributing to the mass
In this paper, we will explore the camp that is Bergen-Belsen and its workers, the camp system, liberation and trial. The notorious detention camp, Bergen-Belsen, was constructed in 1940 and “was near Hanover in northwest Germany, located between the villages Bergen and Belsen” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org), hence the name. Originally, the “camp was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org) but, Bergen-Belsen rapidly grew. “In the first eighteen months of existence, there were already five satellite camps.” (holocaustresearchproject.org).
“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” said by the enlightened Dalai Lama. The Jews, innocent and sympathetic, were treated like trash during Kristallnacht. The Night of Broken Glass was one of the most terrifying and brutal nights of German history, in addition Kristallnacht was an excuse for the Nazi party to eradicate the Jews and other minor ethnic groups. The Secret Police and the Waffen SS could determine if people were Jewish or not if they had certain attributes such as having blonde hair, having light blue eyes, and having a rectangular shaped forehead. Over hundreds were injured and a copious amount had died during Kristallnacht, in addition Jews were not only affected in Germany but also in “territories forcibly seized by Germany, Austria and Sudentland” (Kristallnacht: Overview). Kristallnacht, a doomsday for Jews, inducing in destruction of Jewish property, death of Jews, and social isolation.
Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.
At first, the Jews believe the Germans to be harmless. It takes dark times and drastic measures for the German’s true wickedness to be unveiled. One of the first instances in which the Jews are exposed to the true evil of their antagonists is the first moment they get off of their cattle cars at Birkenau-Auschwitz. Consumed by Madame Schachter’s prophesied “fire,” the sky symbolizes the flaming hell that the Jews are about to endure. At this moment, as the Jews stare silently at the ravenous chimneys spouting out flames, their worst nightmares evolve into reality. At midnight, the witching hour, the Jews’ eyes finally begin to see the evil that surrounds them.
Gesensway, Deborah and Mindy Roseman. Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps. London: Cornell University Press, 1987.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
“’Is my mother a communist?’ Staring. Straight ahead. ‘They were always asking her things, before I came here.’ … ‘Did the Fuhrer take her away?’ … ‘I knew it.’ The words were thrown at the steps and Liesel could feel the slush of anger stirring hotly in her stomach. ‘I hate the Fuhrer’ she said. ‘I hate him.’” (115)
Questioning the holocaust ever happening can be disputable, yet evidence of gas chambers inside surviving Nazi camps proves murders were in fact committed inside the camps. Concentration camps were estimated to have killed 6 million Jews, yet the total number of deaths committed in such a structure has people doubting whether these camps were capable of such slaughter. However, evidence found in the surviving structures reveal that camps like Auschwitz had the capability to exterminate thousands. A supporter of this theory is Filip Muller, a surviving Jew forced to dispose of dead bodies into gas chambers, better known as a Sonderkommano. In his book Eyewitness Auschwitz, Muller reveals blueprints found in Auschwitz labeled “Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp,” discovered in the Nazi archives (174). These blueprints are similar to the surviving concentration camps such as Treblinka, Warsaw, and Belzec. Each exter...
As World War II occurred, the Jewish population suffered a tremendous loss and was treated with injustice and cruelty by the Nazi’s seen through examples in the book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Victor Frankl records his experiences and observations during his time as prisoner at Auschwitz during the war. Before imprisonment, he spent his leisure time as an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, Austria and was able to implement his analytical thought processes to life in the concentration camp. As a psychological analyst, Frankl portrays through the everyday life of the imprisoned of how they discover their own sense of meaning in life and what they aspire to live for, while being mistreated, wrongly punished, and served with little to no food from day to day. He emphasizes three psychological phases that are characterized by shock, apathy, and the inability to retain to normal life after their release from camp. These themes recur throughout the entirety of the book, which the inmates experience when they are first imprisoned, as they adapt as prisoners, and when they are freed from imprisonment. He also emphasizes the need for hope, to provide for a purpose to keep fighting for their lives, even if they were stripped naked and treated lower than the human race. Moreover, the Capos and the SS guards, who were apart of the secret society of Hitler, tormented many of the unjustly convicted. Although many suffered through violent deaths from gas chambers, frostbites, starvation, etc., many more suffered internally from losing faith in oneself to keep on living.
The story contains times when the SS officials would shoot any Jew that was not in their place or call them certain things that would make them feel depressed. One example is when the character Eliezer and hid "block" were marching their way out of Buna and a SS officer had yelled out, "Faster you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs!" (Wiesel 85). This is a prime example of dehumanization, having the Jews feel like filthy dogs instead of human beings. The SS had no problem killing a Jew who was not keeping the same pace as the others . "They had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace. Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of the pleasure. If one of us stopped for a second, a quick shot eliminated the filthy dog"(Wiesel 85)
When the Hangman first came to the town, he came ”smelling of gold and blood and flame”(Ogden 1). The gold represented “the twin goals of racial purity and spatial expansion” that both parties sought (History.com Staff). The blood represented the blood that would be shed in the story and Hitler’s goal of “‘the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany’”(History.com Staff). The flame represents the very definition of Holocaust as it comes” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar”(History.com Staff). The narrator expresses his emotions during the time “and innocent we were, with dread we passed those eyes of buckshot lead”(Ogden 1). In both cases, the victims knew that they were innocent but did not have a chance to prove it. The scaffold represented the power over all of the people just like Hitler did. “The wings of the scaffold opened wide till they covered the square from side to side”(Ogden 3) The scaffolds continued to grow until no sunlight shone through. The power that both Hitler and the scaffolds had over the people was unsurpassable. Similarly to how the narrator helped the Hangman, many people believe that ” the leaders of the Protestant churches—had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people.”(United States Holocaust Memorial
This shows how silence encourages the tormentor, Hitler, as the tormentor did not decline in progress, but merely perpetuated in progress since no one stopped him from doing so, not even those who had heard the warning. The price of silence was also paid by the people who were indifferent and quiet about the injustice, A majority of them died. However those who speak out against the injustice were also killed. Such as the hangings of the pipel who was under the service of the Oberkapo of the 52nd cable Kommando. He was hanged for taking part in preparing for a rebellion, “But his young pipel remained behind, in solitary confinement. He too was tortured, but he too remained silent. The SS then condemned him to death, him and two other inmates who had been found to possess arms.”(pg 64)
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...
Life and Death in the Third Reich. 1st Ed. -. ed. a. a. a. a. a. a. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, Harvard UP, 2008.