While Badenheim 1939 and Jacob the Liar both deal with Jews in an unnamed ghetto/community on the eve of deportation, the attitudes and actions of the Jewish populations were different and similar in a few ways. After reading Michael Bernstein’s discussion of Badenheim, my views on how Badenheim 1939 and Jacob the Liar have changed. With that said, I came to an understanding of my own that Badenheim 1939 and Jacob the Liar both differ from each other and have some attitudes common. Also, the Bernstein’s article makes me believe in Jacob the Liar approach over Badenheim 1939. Thus, with Bernstein’s article, I can apply his argument with the common and differences in attitudes from desperation tendencies causing mischievous trustfulness in the Jewish communities, people with unrealistic blind optimism, and lying that changed the local Jewish attitudes giving some people hope between Badenheim 1939 and Jacob the Liar. First, both Badenheim 1939 and Jacob the Liar instill a mischievous trustfulness in some of the people in the ghetto/community population, one of the attitudes both have in common. Both stories gave the appearance that showed the Jewish population in the ghetto/community with desperation tendencies, and an attitude to do anything to survive, leading to a lot of mistrust between them. The writing of Badenheim showed the “Sanitation Department” making the local Jewish population of the Austrian town registering as a Jew, as the “Sanitation Department” does their investigation, it begins a lot of mistrust between the Jewish population in town. Also, mistrust is shown in Jacob the Liar. An example of this was when Jacob tries to tell his working partner at the time, Mischa, that the Russians will be advancing soon. Jacob wa... ... middle of paper ... ...used many times throughout history. Thus, I can see it as a realistic situation and very fesible. However, Badenheim 1939, with the support of Bernstein’s article, helped me strengthen my preference for Jacob the Liar even more. It’s extremely hard for me to believe that people could be so clueless and to continually mistake obvious actions like the city barrier as no problem at all. After reading Bernstein’s article, could you believe the blind optimism he depicted? Or even with that said, I could more believe that the Sanitation Department was lying claiming Poland would be a nice place to travel to with more truth than the Jewish characters. Works Cited Apelfeld, Aharon. Badenheim 1939. Boston: D. R. Godine, 1980. Print. Becker, Jurek. Jacob the Liar. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975. Print. Bernstein, Michael. Narrating the Shoah. Print.
In March 11, 1900 in a German town called Konitz the severed body parts of a human were discovered. Almost immediately, the blame fell on the Jewish. As Smith points out, anti-Semitism had been on a steady decline, and the anti-Semitics were looking for ways to revitalize the movement. The murder was an opportunity for anti-Semitics revive their movement. After the identity of the body was discovered to be Ernst Winter, the Staatsburgerzeitung, an anti-Semitic newspaper, printed several articles focusing on Konitz. Using unverified accounts from people in the town, it claimed that the murder was a ritual murder that had been carried out by the Jewish. The use of fear mongering was affective because the paper was a Berlin based paper so distribution was wide, and news of the murder traveled far. A crucial facet of the rise of anti-Semitism was due to anti-Semitic newspapers taking stories such as the Ernst Winter murder and using them to promote their cause. One of Smith’s sources, the Preuβische Jahrbṻcher, had a printed article written by Heinrich von Treitschke who was an historian; in which one of his quotes was “The Jews are our misfortune.” His article was what later spurred the German population’s turn from liberalism a...
Throughout The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town, the murder of Ernst Winter in Konitz is very much a reflection of the overall attitudes of many Europeans during the early 20th century. It was clear that once the anti-Semitic attitudes started to become prominent in society, they spiraled out of control and started to take over entire communities. The Jewish people were blamed for crimes they did not commit, were excluded from society, and suffered from acts of violence and hate speech. Wild stories began to be spread all over town and people started to believe everything they heard, even if there was no substance behind it. This caused lots of problems in Germany, as well as Europe in general, since many people got
As fragile relations between Konitz-residing Christians and Jews increasingly began to deteriorate, rumors and speculation that Winter had fallen victim to ritual murder by local Jews, set the ball in motion for a virulent anti-Semitic nature characteristic of Imperial Germany. This anti-Jew sentiment would further be sensationalized by rumors, political movements, and the biased, fabricated newspaper reports of the
Jews' Beliefs and the Holocaust In the eyes of many Jews, the Shoah was the most evil act taken out on. the Jewish community and the community. Shoah is a Hebrew word meaning "desolation." and has become the preferred term for the Holocaust for Jews. scholars who believe the word 'holocaust' has lost its significance.
Goldhagen's book however, has the merit of opening up a new perspective on ways of viewing the Holocaust, and it is the first to raise crucial questions about the extent to which eliminationist anti-Semitism was present among the German population as a whole. Using extensive testimonies from the perpetrators themselves, it offers a chilling insight into the mental and cognitive structures of hundreds of Germans directly involved in the killing operations. Anti-Semitism plays a primary factor in the argument from Goldhagen, as it is within his belief that anti-Semitism "more or less governed the ideational life of civil society" in pre-Nazi Germany . Goldhagen stated that a
The resistance of the Holocaust has claimed worldwide fame at a certain point in history, but the evidence that the evil-doers themselves left crush everything that verifies the fantasy of the Holocaust. For an example, in Poland, the total Jewish population of over thirty-three hundred thousand suddenly plummeted to three hundred thousand. Ten percent of the population survived the Holocaust in Poland. Almost every country that the Nazis have conquered has the same percent of survival as Poland. In Elie Wiesel Wiesel’s memoir Night, the activities in the concentration camps, the suffering of Jews, and the disbelief of the inhumane actions of the Nazis result in making people resist the truth.
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.
Many different responses have occurred to readers after their perusal of this novel. Those that doubt the stories of the holocaust’s reality see Night as lies and propaganda designed to further the myth of the holocaust. Yet, for those people believing in the reality, the feelings proffered by the book are quite different. Many feel outrage at the extent of human maliciousness towards other humans. Others experience pity for the loss of family, friends, and self that is felt by the Holocaust victims.
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.
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...
Rubinstein, William D. The Myth of Bombing Auschwitz. The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis. London: Routledge, 1997. 157-81. Print.
Gottfried, Ted. Deniers of the Holocaust: who they are, what they do, and why they do it. Brookfield , Connecticut : Twenty-First Century Books, 2001. Print.
Levi, Neil, and Michael Rothberg. The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Print.
Gottfried, Ted, and Stephen Alcorn. Deniers of the Holocaust: Who They Are, What They Do, Why They Do It. Brookfield, CT: Twenty-First Century, 2001. Print.
When the infamous Hitler began his reign in Germany in 1933, 530,000 Jews were settled in his land. In a matter of years the amount of Jews greatly decreased. After World War II, only 15,000 Jews remained. This small population of Jews was a result of inhumane killings and also the fleeing of Jews to surrounding nations for refuge. After the war, emaciated concentration camp inmates and slave laborers turned up in their previous homes.1 Those who had survived had escaped death from epidemics, starvation, sadistic camp guards, and mass murder plants. Others withstood racial persecution while hiding underground or living illegally under assumed identities and were now free to come forth. Among all the survivors, most wished not to return to Germany because the memories were too strong. Also, some become loyal to the new country they had entered. Others feared the Nazis would rise again to power, or that they would not be treated as an equal in their own land. There were a few, though, who felt a duty to return to their home land, Germany, to find closure and to face the reality of the recent years. 2 They felt they could not run anymore. Those survivors wanted to rejoin their national community, and show others who had persecuted them that they could succeed.