Sarah Kassakian
DellaBella
L.A. Red
10 April 2017
The Sneetches
In January of 1933 Hitler was elected as Chancellor of Germany which eventually caused a huge, negative, and destructive impact on many countries. Seuss's book Sneetches illustrates the unfairness and inequality that required most Jewish people in Europe to be treated differently and were also denied basic rights. Hitler's supporters of Nazi Germany did not define a "Jew" as someone with particular religious beliefs, they identified Jews as anyone who had Jewish grandparents and this was regardless of whether that individual identified themselves as a Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community. Seuss illustrates this theme of identity and inequality by creating two characters with unimportant differences in his influential story.
Seuss's story The Sneetches was based off Adolf Hitler's acts that divided Jews and Germans with false accusations that lead to many problems. When Hitler began his rise to fame, his preferences and beliefs greatly influenced the people of Germany. The population was told Jewish people were the source of Germany's problems. The people believed what Hitler was preaching because
…show more content…
This proved how far Germans would go to "cleanse" their nation. Edwin, Hoyt P., Guinn P. Robert, Israel Gutman, and Trudy Ring. ("Nuremberg Laws." Then Again. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2017). Hitler also helped create concentration camps. The first concentration camps in Germany were set up after Hitler's election in 1933. This lead to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews, and 5,000 Jewish communities had been destroyed by the time the largest camp was liberated in 1945. ("Liberation of Nazi Camps." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 12 Apr.
The Holocaust was an extraordinary event that affected the lives of millions of people, including Elie Wiesel, and led to the death of many innocent lives. It all began when Adolf Hitler became Germany’s dictator in 1933. Hitler praised the German population and seemed to ban all other competing races, specifically the Jewish population in Germany. This hatred toward the Jews led to extreme discrimination. Hitler’s main goal was to lead the Jewish race out of the country through the establishment of harsh laws against them (Barrett). After having little effect, Hitler decided to force the Jews into political imprisonment which led to the creation of the first concentration camps in 1933. However,
Seuss in 1961, speaks of two different types of creatures who are divided by either having or not having stars printed on their bellies. These very stars, despite us “...[thinking] such a thing wouldn’t matter at all”, serve as the identifying mark and clear contrast between the Star-belly and Plain-belly Sneetches; this mark is what allows one group to discriminate against another. By the end of the story harmony amongst these two groups is only achieved once the Sneetches no longer remember who is who, and they realise that they are in fact all exactly the same creature. This is an issue that stems far beyond having or not having a star on a belly, and although it seems to be an absurd form of prejudice it is one nevertheless. Within this story lies a very important moral; one which helps children better understand the nature of prejudice and discrimination through the Star-Bellied and Plain-Bellied Sneetches treating each other with disrespect. It provides a message that we should not allow the dividing line in society to be ethnicity or race and that humans, much like the Sneetches, are able to coexist once we realise we are all
One of the many themes that has arose is the theme of injustice. The theme of injustice stood out just by reading the back of the book. As stated before, this book takes place in the time of Hitler’s reign in Nazi Germany. If anyone had previous knowledge as to what Adolf Hitler’s “final solution” entitled, social injustice would evidently be pointed out. These prejudices could be something such as concentration camps, torture, discrimination of the Jewish race and the destruction of homes and shops. Although many Germans had no idea what was happening in Germany during Hitler’s reign, one would be quick to judge Germans as a whole. This is the perspective that is dominant in the novel, they never mention massacre or concentration camps, and they just lived their normal lives. After the author educates the reader about a Jewish man named Max Vandenburg, the narrator says: “You could argue that Liesel Meminger had it easy. She did have it easy compared to Max Vandenburg. Certainly, her brother practically died in her arms. Her mother abandoned her. But anything was better than being a Jew” (Zusak 161). This quote by itself shows how terribly the Jewish people were treated. In their daily lives, they are faced with destruction, social injustice, and discrimination. They are treated very disrespectfully; they live with racial slurs, house raids, as well as having the Star of David painted on
On January 30, 1933, Hitler rose to power, during his time of power Jews had been dehumanized, reduced to little more than “things” by the Nazis. Many examples of how they had been dehumanized are shown in the novel, Night by Elie Wiesel. For example, the Jews were stripped of their identity, they were abused, and they treated each other with a lack of dignity and voice. To begin with, Jews were stripped of their identity when “every Jew had to wear the yellow star”(Wiesel 11). They were forced to wear the yellow badge in order to be identified as a Jew.
Concentration camps were started in many ways and many they were not good. “ The concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933.” Provided from(USHMM). This shows how he became a leader and soon after was the takeover of Germany. “German authorities
In the Summer of 1941, Adolf Hitler started exterminating Jews and other non-Aryans, as a part of his plan to create a perfect Germany and to carry out his ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’. Before exterminating 6,000,000 Jewish people, Adolf Hitler had already performed several actions which singled out the Jew as an evil person and one who should be killed. In 1923, Hitler was caught while trying to overturn the Bavarian government and was imprisoned for 5 years. In prison, he wrote the famed autobiography, Mein Kampf, in which he stated his first publicly known anti-Semitic beliefs and his ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’. While imprisoned, there was a worldwide depression as economic markets crashed worldwide. This would help Hitler because once out of prison he would use this to help gain power both for the Nazi’s and for himself politically by promising better things to come in the future. In 1933, while preaching in front of a large Nazi crowd, Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats for Germany’s loss in World War One. “If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.'; Many people were upset at the loss, and blaming the Jews made many people anti-Semites. Once he was named chancellor in 1933, Hitler preached about creating a Germany for true German people and a more centralized Germany. This included eliminating those who were non-Aryans and/or non-German. He would later detail about what a true German was in the Nuremberg Laws. He stated that Jews were not really Germans but instead, they were non-Aryan, and they were malignant tumors.
Seuss in the midst of Civil Rights Movement. Discrimination was a nationwide issue and Seuss knew that his story would bring the attention of many different races and those from all walks of life. People of this era could relate with the misery the Plain-Belly Sneetches were in. As the Plain-Bellies were being stereotyped for not having stars on their skin, people in the fifties and sixties were being discriminated by their class, race, religion, and even their sexuality. In the story, the Plain-Belly Sneetches weren’t allowed to play with the Star-Belly Sneetches. As the story goes on, it declares “When the Star-Belly children went out to play ball, / Could a Plain-Belly get in the game...? Not at all. / You could only play if your bellies had stars / And the Plain-Belly children had none upon thars” (Sneetches 13-16). When this happens in the story, it alludes back to the civil rights movement. In the fifties and sixties, blacks were living a life barricaded from everyone else. For example, blacks had separate bathrooms they were expected to use. Back then, anything and almost everything segregated the blacks from the
The Jewish people were targeted, hunted, tortured, and killed, just for being Jewish, Hitler came to office on January 20, 1933; he believed that the German race had superiority over the Jews in Germany. The Jewish peoples’ lives were destroyed; they were treated inhumanly for the next 12 years, “Between 1933 and 1945, more than 11 million men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust. Approximately six million of these were Jews” (Levy). Hitler blamed a lot of the problems on the Jewish people, being a great orator Hitler got the support from Germany, killing off millions of Jews and other people, the German people thought it was the right thing to do. “To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community” (History.com Staff).
To begin with, Racism had a big effect in the genocide and murders in Germany. According A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust, it states that “ It was the explicit aim of Hitler's regime to create a European world both dominated and populated by the "Aryan" race. Some people were undesirable by Nazi standards because of who they were,their genetic or cultural origins, or health conditions.” (“ Victims” ). It is so devastating that someone could kill or torture anyone who was not like them or who fought against them. The Jews were required to carry their identification cards. They were also excluded from businesses, parks, resorts, and forests. German children were taught that the Jews and Gypsies were not as good as the Germans. One of the methods used to teach German children was to make the Jewish children stand up and point out their distinguishing features. Later on the Jewish children were banned from schools and had curfews. John Boyne Quotes from his book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas “What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?” In his speeches and writings Hitler spread his believes in racial “purity” and in the superiority of their Germanic race. What he called an “Aryan master race”. These believes became the governments ideology and were spread in publicly displayed posters on the radios,m...
The Nazi Party, controlled by Adolf Hitler, ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. In 1933, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany and the Nazi government began to take over. Hitler became a very influential speaker and attracted new members to his party by blaming Jews for Germany’s problems and developed a concept of a “master race.” The Nazis believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jewish people were a threat to the German racial community and also targeted other groups because of their “perceived racial inferiority” such as Gypsies, disabled persons, Polish people and Russians as well as many others. In 1938, Jewish people were banned from public places in Germany and many were sent to concentration camps where they were either murdered or forced to work.
Starting with creating a Law to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship. Then moving on to pass a law allowing for forced sterilization of those found by a Hereditary Health Court to have genetic defects. They also prohibit Jews from owning land, also from being newspaper editors. Jewish people are also banned from the German labor front and stripped of national health insurance. The Jews where also prohibited from receiving legal qualifications. The Nazis ban Jewish people from serving in the military. Hitler was trying to form his version of a perfect race by not only stripping Jews of their rights but also Gypsies, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s witnesses. The name for the plan of the mass extermination was called “the final solution”. The Jews where sentenced to death there was really no escape for them. Some people where very lucky, some people of Jewish ancestry were sometimes able to escape being sent to the Nazi death camps if their grandparents had converted to Christianity before the date of January 18, of 1871. This date marked the start of Germanys unification and the start of the German empire. After the beginning of World War II, N...
The first concentration camps were set up in 1933. Hitler established the camps when he came into power for the purpose of isolating, punishing, torturing, and killing anyone suspected of opposition against his regime. In the early years of Hitler's reign, concentration camps were places that held people in protective custody. These people in protective custody included those who were both physically and mentally ill, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews and anyone against the Nazi regime. By the end of 1933 there were at least fifty concentration camps throughout occupied Europe.
Soon after Germany separated from Austria in March 1938, the Nazi soldiers arrested and imprisoned Jews in concentration camps all over Germany. Only eight months after annexation, the violent anti-jew Kristallnacht , also known as Night of the Broken Glass, pogroms took place. The Nazi soldiers arrested masses of male adult Jews and held them captive in camps for short periods of time. A death camp is a concentration camp designed with the intention of mass murder, using strategies such as gas chambers. Six death concentration camps exis...
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Germany was experiencing great economic and social hardship. Germany was defeated in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles forced giant reparations upon the country. As a result of these reparations, Germany suffered terrible inflation and mass unemployment. Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party who blamed Jews for Germany’s problems. His incredible public speaking skills, widespread propaganda, and the need to blame someone for Germany’s loss led to Hitler’s great popularity among the German people and the spread of anti-Semitism like wildfire. Hitler initially had a plan to force the Jews out of Germany, but this attempt quickly turned into the biggest genocide in history. The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933.“...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” –Adolf Hitler
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.