“The Great Escape” and the Holocaust
Embodying the history and culture of prison system’s such as the Holocaust with art such as film demands certain cinematic techniques. In 1963, John Sturges directed an American World War II film called “The Great Escape”, based off of the true story of Prisoners of War escaping from the German camp Stalag Luft III. Stalag Luft III was a Luftwaffe-run Prisoner of War camp during World War II which held captured Western Allied air force personnel. Although in “The Great Escape” the film depicts the real-life desperation and perseverance of those Prisoners of War who tried to escape, the use of dramatic language, narrative perspective, and dramatized imagery emphasizes the severity behind the camp “Stalag
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Compare “The Great Escape”, the real-life testimonies, and the memoirs from the Gulag is helpful in order to recognize similarities and differences between the culture of the Gulag and the Holocaust. Often, those in the Gulag who tried to escape were punished or sentenced to death. In “The Gulag Archipelago,” written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, his experiences within the forced labor prison camp system are depicted. On page 586, he states, “They used to deliver orders like this: ‘One step out of line and the convoy guard will shoot and slash!’ That had a very powerful sound: ‘shoot and slash!’ You could imagine them cutting your head from behind.” Similar conditions followed those who attempted to step out of line within the Holocaust labor camp system. In a testimony given by POW survivor Van Wymeersch, he states, “A few days later a list of those who had been shot was pinned up on the Compound notice board. It gave forty-seven names. Three more names were added later,” (Tuck & Grehan 214). Just as Solzhenitsyn’s memoir depicts the consequences of attempting to escape the Gulag, Wymeersch depicts the realities of those 50 prisoners of war who faced the consequences of attempting to escape Stalag Luft III. The same pattern is recognized in the film “The Great Escape,” especially in the scene where the character of Ives attempts to cross the barbed wire. When attempting to escape, Ives is shot to death, leaving him brutally killed and hanging on the barbed wire. Both the Gulag and the Holocaust consisted of detrimental consequences and treatment, and although some conditions were different, those imprisoned maintained the same outlook on life in their
The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the American Slavery and the Holocaust, in terms of which one was more malevolent than the other. Research indicates that “the “competition” between African-American and Jews has served to trivialize the malevolence which both has suffered” (Newton, 1999). According to L. Thomas “A separate issue that contributes to the tension between blacks and Jews refer to to the role that Jews played in the American Slave trade.”
The Holocaust is known to be one the World's greatest catastrophes. Many people know about it, but very few know how life was like in the concentration camps. In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes figurative language like metaphors, irony, foreshadowing, and unique sentence structures, to convey and compare how life during the Holocaust was ghastly, full of lies and regret, and how it was like "one long night, seven times cursed"(25).
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.
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
The atomic bombings of Japanese cities and the genocides of the Holocaust are horrific events in human history. Although these events have their differences, they influence the world greatly today because they differ from each other to provide comparisons for history, have significance because of the survivors who tell their personal story, and achieve significance morally as well as immorally.
As World War II occurred, the Jewish population suffered a tremendous loss and was treated with injustice and cruelty by the Nazi’s seen through examples in the book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Victor Frankl records his experiences and observations during his time as prisoner at Auschwitz during the war. Before imprisonment, he spent his leisure time as an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, Austria and was able to implement his analytical thought processes to life in the concentration camp. As a psychological analyst, Frankl portrays through the everyday life of the imprisoned of how they discover their own sense of meaning in life and what they aspire to live for, while being mistreated, wrongly punished, and served with little to no food from day to day. He emphasizes three psychological phases that are characterized by shock, apathy, and the inability to retain to normal life after their release from camp. These themes recur throughout the entirety of the book, which the inmates experience when they are first imprisoned, as they adapt as prisoners, and when they are freed from imprisonment. He also emphasizes the need for hope, to provide for a purpose to keep fighting for their lives, even if they were stripped naked and treated lower than the human race. Moreover, the Capos and the SS guards, who were apart of the secret society of Hitler, tormented many of the unjustly convicted. Although many suffered through violent deaths from gas chambers, frostbites, starvation, etc., many more suffered internally from losing faith in oneself to keep on living.
Imagine; you are stripped of your identity and obliged to conform to the others of your exact situation. You are continually being monitored in an isolated area. The restrictions placed by your tormentors are precise and harsh and if you do not obey, you are punished beyond the simple yell in the face or slap of the hand. You endure this lifestyle for weeks and weeks, over time you begin to change both physically and mentally. Your weight has drastically plummeted and you have begun to lose hope in an exit. At this point you are desperate for a solution to your problems, resulting is assumably regrettable actions. All of which you have just read was what prisoners during the Holocaust had to face in concentration camps. In the memoir Night,
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...
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
The poem “The action in the ghetto of Rohatyn, March 1942” by Alexander Kimel is an amazing literary work which makes the reader understand the time period of the Holocaust providing vivid details. Kimel lived in an “unclean” area called the ghetto, where people were kept away from German civilians. The poet describes and questions himself using repetition and rhetorical questions. He uses literary devices such as repetition, comparisons, similes and metaphors to illustrate the traumatizing atmosphere he was living in March 1942.
If This Is a Man or Survival in Auschwitz), stops to exist; the meanings and applications of words such as “good,” “evil,” “just,” and “unjust” begin to merge and the differences between these opposites turn vague. Continued existence in Auschwitz demanded abolition of one’s self-respect and human dignity. Vulnerability to unending dehumanization certainly directs one to be dehumanized, thrusting one to resort to mental, physical, and social adaptation to be able to preserve one’s life and personality. It is in this adaptation that the line distinguishing right and wrong starts to deform. Primo Levi, a survivor, gives account of his incarceration in the Monowitz- Buna concentration camp.
There are so many freedoms that everyday people take for granted. Over six million Jewish people were taken from their families and friends. Corrie Ten Boom a victim and survivor from the holocaust once stated “Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.” The stories The Prison Cell and Freedom to Breathe differed in their approach towards freedom, but were similar in their approaches to being held captive. This essay is going to tell you about their experience during their imprisonment.
For most people, survival is just a matter of putting food on the table, making sure that the house payment is in on time, and remembering to put on that big winter coat. Prisoners in the holocaust did not have to worry about such things. Their food, cloths, and shelter were all provided for them. Unfortunately, there was never enough food, never sufficient shelter, and the cloths were never good enough. The methods of survival portrayed in the novels Maus by Art Spieglmen and Night by Elie Wiesel are distinctly different, but undeniably similar.
The success of the escape did not ultimately impinge on whether everyone got out or not, but whether he or she was able to defy the Germans. In different ways, Feldhendler, Pechersky, Shlomo, Toivi, all resisted the Germans. “But what about the others?” said Boris, one of Pechersky’s right hand men, “You know the Germans will kill them all”. Boris replied, “’No my friend, when we go, we’ll all go together. The whole camp. Some will die. But those who make it will get even for them (Rashke, 1995, p.167)
Directed By John Sturges and released in 1963, The Great Escape is a thrilling drama based off Paul Brickhill’s factual account of the efforts of Allied prisoners to break out of Stalag Luft III during World War II. The break out was the largest number of prisoners of war to escape from a German prison camp, even though this camp was designed to house prisoners who made a habit of escape attempts. About 100 miles southeast of Berlin, Germany, the Stalag Luft III was built. The North compound opened up in March of 1943 and was originally built to hold British airmen, but American and other Allied nations airmen came to stay also. This compound would be where the Great Escape occurred.