The final piece of her father’s identity as a prison guard is hiding from his past. Concealing past identities is a common practice for people who have committed atrocities. After the Holocaust, thousands of Nazis escaped to the Americas. Seven notorious Nazis fled to South America, and two of them eluded punishment for the remainder of their lives (Klein). However, in order for Nazis to remain undiscovered, their past lives had to remain hidden from society. A 1998 film, Apt Pupil, describes a story about a boy who discovers that the old man residing on his block was a Nazi war criminal. He then blackmails the old man, forcing the former Nazi to disclose information about his time at the concentration camps, under threat of being reported …show more content…
The late 1980s and 1990s was the height of their fear. In 2000, a former Haitian military chief during the dictatorship received a life sentence in prison and involuntary deportation back to Haiti. During this time, three others involved suffered the same consequence: arrest and deportation (“Disney Worker Deported to Haiti for Massacre”). These are the stories that caused immigrants to continue to live in fear. They caused Haitians, such as the father in “The Book of the Dead,” to fully hide their identity and their past or risk deportation and imprisonment. Haitian immigrants experienced mounting terror not only due to news articles on deportations, but as a result of other forms of media as well. Haitian Corner is a 1987 film about a Haitian prisoner during the Duvalier dictatorship who moved to America. It describes the perfect nightmare for any prison guard or militiamen during the dictatorship. The prisoner was visiting the Haitian Corner bookstore that many who fled the regime frequented when he recognizes the man who was his torturer. After this, his only focus is finding his torturer and getting his revenge …show more content…
The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat, which includes “The Book of the Dead,” also discusses this issue. All of the short stories in this book focus on different aspects of living in hiding, however, their main focus is on prison guards during the dictatorship hiding their past. In “The Book of Miracles,” Annie’s mother recognizes a man in church wanted for murder and torture in Haiti. Although she later realizes that she misidentified him, she never returns to the church with her husband due to fear that he will one day be recognized, deported, and imprisoned. “Night Talkers” focuses on a character who has found the man who murdered his parents and blinded his aunt. At one point in the story, the main character went to the man’s house when it was dark with the purpose to kill the man, but he ends up not murdering him due to fear that he incorrectly identified the man. In “The Bridal Seamstress,” a woman points out a house to her friend that is the house of the prison guard that once whipped her. The friend asks around and discovers that the house is actually vacant. She approaches her friend about this and the friend shows no signs of surprise, she knew the house was vacant stating that if anyone ever found out where the man actually lived, he would be in prison. Finally, “Monkey Tails” describes the lives of militiamen who remained in Haiti. The militiamen
Her father helped Ruth and her aunt – whose two children had already been killed by the Nazis – get a job working at a leather factory outside the ghetto. He also managed to acquire false passports for the women, giving them Catholic names and identities. The plan was for the pair to escape during one of their regular trips to the bathhouse, where workers were taken weekly. “We marched with guards on each side and marched back again,” explains Ruth. “On one of those events my aunt had the false passports.
On Hitler’s Mountain is a memoir of a child named Irmgard Hunt and her experiences growing up in Nazi Germany. She herself has had many experiences of living during that dark time, she actually met Hitler, had a grandfather who hated Hitler's rule, and had no thoughts or feelings about the Nazi rule until the end of WWII. Her memoir is a reminder of what can happen when an ordinary society chooses a cult of personality over rational thought. What has happened to the German people since then, what are they doing about it today and how do they feel about their past? Several decades later, with most Nazis now dead or in hiding, and despite how much Germany has done to prevent another Nazi rule, everyone is still ashamed of their ancestors’ pasts.
The essay begins with Griffin across the room from a woman called Laura. Griffin recalls the lady taking on an identity from long ago: “As she speaks the space between us grows larger. She has entered her past. She is speaking of her childhood.” (Griffin 233) Griffin then begins to document memories told from the lady about her family, and specifically her father. Her father was a German soldier from around the same time as Himmler. Griffin carefully weaves the story of Laura with her own comments and metaphors from her unique writing style.
Helene Melanie Lebel, one of two daughters born to a Jewish family, was raised as a Catholic in Vienna. Her father died during World War I when Helene was only 5 years old, and when Helene was 15, her mother remarried. Helene entered law school, but at age 19, she started showing signs of an illness. By 1935, her illness became so bad severe that she had to give up her law studies. Helene was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and was placed in Vienna’s Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital. Although her condition improved in 1940, Helene was forced to stay in Steinhof. Her parents believed she would soon be released, but in August, her mother was informed that Helene was transferred to Niedernhart. She was actually transported to Brandenburg, Germany where she was led into a gas chamber or room? disguised as a shower room, and was gassed to death. Helene was listed as dying in her room of “acute schizophrenic excitement”.
In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Liesel Meminger, an orphaned little girl living in Nazi Germany, evolves partly through her numerous literary thefts. At her younger brother’s gravesite, she steals her first book, The Grave Digger’s Handbook, which teaches her not only the method to physically bury her brother, but also lets her emotionally bury him and move on. The theft of her next book, The Shoulder Shrug, from a book burning marks the start of Liesel’s awareness and resistance to the Nazi regime. As a story with a Jewish protagonist “who [is] tired of letting life pass him by – what he refer[s] to as the shrugging of the shoulders to the problems and pleasures of a person’s time on earth,” this novel prepares her both for resisting the
The Book Thief and Nazi Germany The heavily proclaimed novel “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak is a great story that can help you understand what living in Nazi Germany was like. Throughout the story, the main character, Liesel goes through many hardships to cope with a new life in a new town and to come to the recognition of what the Nazi party is. Liesel was given up for adoption after her mother gave her away to a new family, who seemed harsh at first, but ended up being the people who taught her all the things she needed to know. Life with the new family didn’t start off good, but the came to love them and her new friend, Rudy.
“I do not believe that many American citizens . . . really wanted to create such immense human suffering . . . in the name of battling illegal immigration” (Carr 70). For hundreds of years, there has been illegal immigration starting from slavery, voluntary taking others from different countries to work in different parts of the world, to one of the most popular- Mexican immigration to the United States. Mexican immigration has been said to be one of the most common immigration acts in the world. Although the high demand to keep immigrants away from crossing the border, Mexicans that have immigrated to the U.S have made an impact on the American culture because of their self sacrifices on the aspiration to cross over. Then conditions
Ngai, Mae M., and Jon Gjerde. "A Cuban Flees to the United States, 1979." Major Problems in American Immigration History: Documents and Essays. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2013. 528-531. Print.
Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben G. Rumbaut. Immigrant America: A Portrait. N.p.: University of California Press, 2006.
To say that immigrants in America have experienced discrimination would be an understatement. Ever since the country formed, they have been seen as inferior, such as African-Americans that were unwillingly brought to the 13 colonies in the 17th century with the intention to be used as slaves. However, post-1965, immigrants, mainly from Central and South America, came here by choice. Many came with their families, fleeing from their native land’s poverty; these immigrants were in search of new opportunities, and more importantly, a new life. They faced abuse and Cesar Chavez fought to help bring equality to minorities.
In 1893 two deadly disease outbreaks were found linked to immigrants in America. However, at this time Americans did not want to suspend immigration. “Public opinion, despite worries over immigration, was not willing to jettison America’s traditional vision of immigration” (Cannato 87). Even with the want to protect the “traditional vision of immigration” that America had, fear of immigrants still existed. Also propaganda in newspapers created a hateful insight on immigration for Americans that knew nothing about immigration. “For Americans who did not have close contact with immigrants, their vision of these newcomers often came from cartoons drawn by unsympathetic hands” (Cannato 179). By only witnessing immigration through hate filled cartoons, Americans started to loathe the idea of immigration. Fear of the unknown that immigrants brought only grew as the years went by. During the 1920s, the idea that the country was no longer one race bothered a great deal of Americans. “The Great War seemed to shift public attitudes toward immigrants, since ‘Americans were forced to the realization that their country, instead of being a homogenous whole, was a jumbled-up mass of undigested racial material” (Cannato 335). The idea of not being one set race, made many Americans leery of immigration. Even after the 1920s the alarm towards immigration has only grown. In addition to the attitudes of the American people during the late 1800s to 1900s, the experiences that immigrants went through was highlighted in Cannato’s book as
Medina states, “Gang rule is absolute and young people are extremely vulnerable to forced recruitment into the gangs. Adolescents are continually intimidated and subjected to violence, pressurised into joining the gangs or working for them as drug pushers or in other roles” (Medina). This fear dynamic is used in order to promote corruption within the system of migration. The migrants that decide to escape are forced to encounter constant dangers while migrating. Medina states, “Fear of deportation is largely behind the failure to report crimes; in order to get their destination, most migrants will continue on their journey as soon as possible, leaving the experiences behind them, shrouded in silence” (Medina). This silence thrives on the system of corruption which implicates Mexico’s passivity to protect migrants from violence. Overall, this represents enduring the consequences the migrants face and the perseverance to
Contemporary migration trends in the United States of America indicate that a large number of Honduran citizens are fleeing their home nation and coming to the U.S. in hopes of a better future. The staggering number of Honduran migrants departing their nation begs the question: what is causing this massive migration? In order to understand the migration of Honduran immigrants, a comprehensive timeline outlining the complex events that have led to this phenomenon must be delineated. This report analyzes Honduras’ history through key political, economic, and social events in chronological order to fully create an outline that explains current Honduran migration.
Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps during World War Two, including Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Many who were sent to the concentration camps did not survive but those who did tried to either forgot the horrific events that took place or went on to tell their personal experiences to the rest of the world. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi wrote memoirs on their time spent in the camps of Auschwitz; these memoirs are called ‘Night’ and ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. These memoirs contain similarities of what it was like for a Jew to be in a concentration camp but also portray differences in how each endured the daily atrocities of that around them. Similarities between Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi’s memoirs can be seen in the proceedings that
German citizens had to endure a challenging lifestyle, presented by Adolf Hitler, of fascism, the holocaust, Jewish laws and propaganda during World War II. From 1939-1942, Nazi Germany affected the lives of Jews, Gypsies, Slavic people, and other groups living in Germany by getting rid of the undesirables, known as the Holocaust. Only Germans with the look of blond hair and blue eyes were even considered to live, only if he or she had no defects or disabilities, anyone else was sent to and killed in concentration camps. The Book Thief takes place in a town near Munich, Germany during this time of the holocaust. The novel focuses on the lives of the people and how they cope and deal with the immediate effects of WWII. It emphasizes the danger of hiding a Jew in a family’s basement, and how they are constantly paranoid of being caught.