Film Analysis: Voices From The Holocaust

During the Holocaust, victims spoke many different languages because they came from all around the world and from different cultures. It was hard for them to communicate in the camps, but the one thing that they all had in common was trauma. They all went through this traumatic experience together, thus making trauma the universal language. It was something that they all understood and it connected all of them. Although they all spoke different languages, trauma was something that linked every survivor around the world. In Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, Cathy Caruth’s The Wound and the Voice, and the film Witness: Voices From the Holocaust, readers and viewers can see that although it was hard from victims to communicate physically because

One lady, Helen K., explains, “sometimes at night, [she] lay and [she] can’t believe what her eyes have seen” (¬¬¬¬¬ Witness: Voices From the Holocaust). She was a prisoner in Auschwitz. It is hard for her sometimes to fully comprehend what happened because it is so extremely unbelievable that something like that could have happened. Another man, Werner S. explains, he will “never forget that there was a huge pile of corpses… [and] they were still alive and breathing but they were just piled up there” (Witness: Voices From the Holocaust). A lot of the things that they were forced to see are something that people should never have to see. These things are so disturbing that it could scar anyone. Another man, Joseph K., remembers thinking that he “couldn’t believe that the American were real… that the Germans were actually defeated… [and] it took a long time to understand that there was a stronger power than Germany” (Witness: Voices From the Holocaust). After all the things that the Germans had did to them, for the war to just end like that, it they were not sure if they should be happy or skeptical because it had gone on for so long. He then continues, “to [the prisoners] they were the all- powerful and they brainwashed [them]… such to an extent that [they] had no belief in [themselves]… and no understanding for right and wrong” (Witness: Voices From the Holocaust). They came out totally different people because of everything that had happened. They were not themselves anymore. Once they were freed, many did not know what to do and some did not believe it. Jacob K. explains, “the scars, the Germans behaviors towards [them], the torturous days and nights, it is something that [they] have [and]… [they] can’t forget that” (Witness: Voices From the Holocaust). He also explains that “he doesn’t want to live with the pain, but its there… and it