A great deal of the what we know about the Holocaust comes from written and oral testimony of survivors. It forms our understanding, stirs our emotions, and cements our humanity. Though one picture is drawn, the pieces that comprise it are unique. Interpreting each unique piece comes with unique challenges. The challenge of faulty memory, dialects, accents, word choice, and translations can prove daunting to the interpreter. When attempting to form a concise understanding, one must form a complement of written and oral testimony. This becomes an even more daunting task when putting together a deep understanding of something possessing the magnitude of the Holocaust. To do any justice to the matter, it is of utmost importance in striking a balance of what is heard and what is read. Before we consider the importance of written and oral testimony, we must first consider the importance of testimonies in general. Testimonies makes personalizing history more facile. It is difficult to grasp what would take a mother to take her children’s lives so that she could spare them the pain and suffering that awaited them in concentration camps. Or the testimonies of children who were forced to steal out of necessity to feed their families. This offers us the complex insight into the world and the choices these survivors dealt with . When you take the memories of hardships, of terror, and of survival, the Holocaust becomes a gateway to the past. I gateway we may not want to pass through, but one we must. Testimonies enhance our understanding. They offer details not found in other publications on events, as in the film Weapons of the Spirit. Its a documentary film by Pierre Sauvage about a village in Nazi-occupied France that shelte... ... middle of paper ... ...understanding, one must form a complement of written and oral testimony. To do any justice to the matter, it is of utmost importance in striking a balance of what is heard and what is read. Whereas writing is more static, speaking is more dynamic. Written testimony can at times be more precise: words can be chosen with greater consideration since the information is not transferred at an instant. The reader is afforded their own pace when digesting information. Such factors can have a profound effect of the understanding by the reader. Oral testimony can have a better effect in expressing the subjects emotion to a listener. When speaking: gestures, volume, pauses, intonation can cause a rather different interpretation than if those words would to be read. When attempting to form a concise understanding, one must form a complement of written and oral testimony.
Niewyk, Donald . "The Will to Survive." In The Holocaust Problems and perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L Niewyk. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. 59-66.
The use of eyewitness statements and testimony’s can be a great source of information, but can also lead to wrongful convictions. Due to eyewitness testimony, innocent people are convicted of crimes they have not committed. This is why the wording of a question is important to consider when interviewing witnesses. Due to the fact that eyewitness testimony can be the most concrete evidence in an investigation, witnesses may feel they are helping an officer by giving them as much information as possible, therefore they may tell them information that is not entirely true, just to please them. This is why there are advantages and disadvantages to using open and close ended questioning at different durations of an interview. The way you word a question may impact the memory of a witness, this is because a person cannot completely memorize the exact occurrences of an event.
There are certain standards that the courts use to determine competency. In order to find the accused competent, a court should find out by a preponderance of evidence that the defendant has remarkable ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational indulgence. The def...
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...
When in America, Helen found that it was hard not to talk about past and the stories of her imprisonment. “Some survivors found it impossible to talk about their pasts. By staying silent, they hoped to bury the horrible nightmares of the last few years. They wanted to spare their children and those who knew little about the holocaust from listening to their terrible stories.” In the efforts to save people from having to hear about the gruesome past, the survivors also lacked the resources to mentally recovery from the tragedy.
The second portion of the semester has had a focus on how the Holocaust has continued to cause devastation and familial conflict even after the war ended. Of the texts we have read, Maus by Art Speigelman and Still Alive by Ruth Kluger were two very different accounts of the Holocaust, however there was one strong continuity between the texts: the effects of the Holocaust were not exclusive to any single person or family, survivors and their offspring continued to suffer long after escaping the camps. The constant tension documented in Maus between Speigelman and his father was not exclusive to their family as Holocaust survivors; Ruth Kluger also incorporates her family struggles into her book by detailing the differences between her and her mother, even after her mother has passed away. Because their experiences differ, with Speigelman being the son of a Holocaust victim and Kluger actually enduring it, the texts took different forms, both linguistically and aesthetically, to communicate their messages of familial conflict.
“Marshal Breger, a catholic university law professor and leader of the expedition, explained that the impetus behind the effort is to address head on, the denial of the Holocaust that is part of growing anti-semitism in muslim communities. His goal, one which we share, is to educate those who might not have the kind of knowledge we have about the Holocaust; to promote understanding; and even change.” (online). “Walking down the train tracks from the Judenrampe to the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria, many remarked that they were not observing the sites as Muslims Jews, or religious leaders, but as parents who could relate the horror of being separated from their children.” (“visit”). Marshal Breger wants to teach Holocaust Deniers about the Holocaust so they can know what really happened and have an understanding about the Holocaust and not say that it never happened.
In the testimonies of Tom Sawyer and the Widow Douglas, I did not adequately ask and modify questions in response to the witnesses’ answers. For example, when the Widow Douglas did not give me the desired response to one of my questions, I simply moved on to the next question I had written on my list. Even though the information she gave was ultimately unimportant in the jury deliberation, I feel that I missed an opportunity to benefit my side’s argument. Likewise, in these two testimonies, I did not fully utilize my redirect examination questions. I simply asked questions that I felt I should have asked in the cross examination, and did not further expand on the witnesses’
As the years distance us from the Nazi horror, and as survivors are slowly starting to lessen in number, we are faced, as a nation, with the challenge of how to educate the new generations of the Holocaust. Many young people have no knowledge of the events that took place in World War II. However, today, artifacts can greatly contribute to the understanding of the Holocaust, just as the movie La Rafle (The Round Up) did for me. The Round Up by Roselyn Bosch shows that the mass arrest of Jews did not only happening in Germany and it also emphasized the cruel dramatic irony of this historical moment.
"A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims. University of South Florida. Web. 19 May 2014.
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
After analyzing the discourse community of law and the detailed process lawyers take in order to write an effective appeals brief, one can see that lawyers have a very specific and unique way of communicating that includes certain jargon unfamiliar and possibly incomprehensible to the general public. Although writing an appeal brief is only one aspect of many that government prosecuting attorneys such as Kenny Elser face in their jobs on a daily basis, it is also a very necessary job because not only is it used by a single discourse community in the law profession but utilized by the discourse community of law as a whole.
Oral and Written Communication skills are two of the most important skills a person could have in the workplace. Without the ability to effectively communicate or understand communication in written or auditory form taking and giving direction would be extremely difficult. Oral communication is simply the act of talking and listening. If a person can effectively convey his thoughts in spoken word and interpret others spoken words into their intended thought then they can effectively communicate orally. The same concept can be applied to the written word. The U.S. Deptartment of Labor breaks oral communication into two areas:
Accurate oral communication is being able to present and interpret your ideas clearly through spoken word and to listen to other people’s ideas. Oral communication is essential for patients and their care givers to receive/provide the accurate care. An example of where this would be seen in a healthcare setting is with a patient who suffers from an allergy. If a patient who is allergic to penicillin does not communicate with their doctor, they may receive medication that will cause harm to them.
Presenting the Case Orally in Court: The Lawyer has to argue about his client’s case in front of the Judge in court.