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Introduction to the holocaust essay
Introduction to the holocaust essay
Introduction to the holocaust essay
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"Who's Worse?" In the documentary "Witness to the Holocaust," Miles Lehrman suggests that perpetrators are not as dangerous as they are thought to be. In fact, he argues that bystanders are more dangerous than the perpetrators themselves. This is a logical claim. First, to support Lehrman’s claim, Kristallnacht serves as a prime example of the impact bystanders have on events and how they can be more dangerous than the perpetrators themselves. On the night of Kristallnacht, many German citizens were bystanders, either out of fear or approval for what was happening. Another example of bystanders on this day were the firefighters. Although they cannot be considered perpetrators because they did not directly attack the Jews, they only prevented the fire from reaching non-Jewish properties. Through these actions, bystanders only affirm the perpetrators and fuel the fire. In some cases, like the firefighters, they are even more dangerous than the perpetrators by allowing the fire to reach Jewish properties. The firefighters ignited the spark that the perpetrators started and turned it into a raging fire. (1) Lehrman argues that bystanders can be more dangerous than the perpetrators themselves because they affirm their actions. He also claims that "neutrality helps the killer." I support this claim with evidence from the video "A Teacher Turns Away." In the video, Rosa Marx's peers fail to stand up for what is right, thereby affirming the perpetrator's actions. It is common to believe that if no one is stopping you from doing something, then it must be the right thing to do....
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...When people argue that they may get hurt, sometimes we have to make sacrifices for something bigger that everyone will benefit from. All in all, if we do not stand up, we only affirm the perpetrators. If too many people affirm perpetrators instead of standing up for the victim, bystanders can prove to be more dangerous than the perpetrators. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Works Cited (1) Tix, Andy, Ph.D. "The Pursuit of Peace." "Kristallnacht:" The Night That Shattered Humanity. Psychology. No changes needed as this appears to be a citation/reference section and not a paragraph from an essay.
During World War II, six million Jews were brutally massacred by Adolph Hitler's Nazi regime. Several authors have written about the actions of bystanders in the Holocaust. In a poem, "The Hangman," and an allegory, The Terrible Things, Maurice Odgen and Eve Bunting described how bystanders could cause problems through their inactions.
The Holocaust was one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever known. There were many key people who participated in this outrageous genocide however some get more attention then others. Adolf Eichmann is a classic example. Eichmann was a self-proclaimed “Jewish Specialist” and head of the Gestapo Department. Eichmann was responsible for keeping every train rolling right into the stations of the concentration and death camps during the holocaust. Now we will take a look into Eichmann’s childhood, life experiences, and his later actions to see what shaped into a man of hatred towards the Jewish race.
Some will say that the Jewish people cannot be held responsible for the crimes committed, because they are the victims. This is not the case, however; the Jewish people could have prevented a great deal of pain and suffering that they experienced. Elie wrote “And thus my elders concerned themselves with all manners of things - strategy, diplomacy,politics, and Zionism - but not with their own fate” (8). The Jewish people had heard of what the Nazis had done to the foreign Jews of Sighet, their town; a Jew had returned and told them, but they refused to listen; they ignored his warnings. Furthermore, the Jewish people had many chances at this time to escape; most notably emigration to another country. The Jewish people ignored the warnings they had received, and their chance to escape; for this reason, they bear a certain degree of responsibility for what
The Holocaust affected many individuals, but mainly the Jewish society; an individual may not realise how expansive the slaughtering of millions of Jews in the Holocaust was. In the book, And Every Single One Was Someone, the word “Jew” was repeated 4,800 times on a single page, and was concluded with a total of 6,000,000 words in the book! (Chernofsky) Not many people actually think about how big 6,000,000 people is, but this book gives a physical representation to how many innocent Jewish individuals were wrongfully killed in the Holocaust.
In Miles Lehrman's documentary, Witness to the Holocaust, he argues, “A perpetrator is not the most dangerous enemy. The most dangerous part is the bystander because neutrality always helps the killer”, This is not a logical claim because bystanders merely witness it; however, they are not committing any crimes against laws or humanity. They may want to help the victim, but they may not do so because being a bystander is simply not illegal. Since forcing someone to be an upstander is illegal, people choose to not be an upstander because it puts them in an undesirable position. After all, standing up for the victim may put the upstander in danger along with the victim. Additionally, becoming an upstander does not guarantee that the victim will be safe and sound afterwards; the perpetrator may continue, perhaps with the upstander as another victim.
For many years, people time and time again denied the happenings of the Holocaust or partially understood what was happening. Even in today’s world, when one hears the word ‘Holocaust’, they immediately picture the Nazi’s persecution upon millions of innocent Jews, but this is not entirely correct. This is because Jews
Normal people of the Jewish community showed negative reactions due to inhumane treatment set forth by the Nazis of Germany. Although it may have been acceptable considering the surroundings they were enduring, if they were in their right mindset and not fighting for their survival, these normal people most likely would not have been cruel towards their peers. Nutritional deficits induced this diabolic behavior and when given food “dozens of starving men fought each other for a few crumbs” (Wiesel 73). These people who were brutally deprived of necessities began fighting each
Fischer & Greitemeyer (2013) studied the how the positive bystander effect was impacted in a field study. There had been a substantial amount of laboratory studies done on the subject, and field studies were lacking. They observed individuals at a subway station in a Germanic city. This field experiment was used to find the interaction of a passive bystander in a set situation of bike theft with no victim on site.
I agree with Elie Wiesel’s statement that being a neutral bystander helps those who are evil and that remaining silent encourages even more evil to happen. Being silent can cause more harm to happen and it happens even if you push it away. To start, more evil happens when you are quiet. When you do not speak up then you are going to regret it in the end. In the poem First They Came, the author did not speak up for anyone and then no one was there to speak up for him. The longer he waited the less people that were there to stand up for him when it was the author’s turn to be taken. There were many groups in which the author should have stood up for them, but he did not and then he was taken himself. Another example is in Terrible Things where
This is demonstrated in the letter, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. defends his decision to taking direct action in the city of Birmingham. He states that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (King 1). This demonstrates how being a bystander just leads to everyone being harmed since allowing an injustice to occur leads to the suffering of many people. Allowing injustices to take place enables evil and corruption to expand, and that leads to people being oppressed and discriminated. Even when the bystander tries to avoid problems by not joining the conflict, he is just bringing more problems to himself because he is allowing his community to be harmed. A bystander subconsciously harms himself by allowing others to be harmed. Therefore, the detrimental effects of being a bystander confirm why an individual should not be
Although people can fear an outcome of telling the truth or standing up for what they believe is right, being a bystander in a poor situation doesn’t exempt someone from innocence. Whether it involves a murder or telling the truth, if someone knows it is wrong and does nothing to take part in what’s going on they are no better than the ones involved in the conflict. In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, both stories involve bystanders. A bystander is not innocent when they do nothing about the problem going on around them.
The Jewish Holocaust has to be one of the most famous and tragic genocides reported. We are taught that the reason we learn all about it is so tragic historical events like this won’t repeat in the future, but they do and they are. What many people don’t realize is that bystanders play a huge role in the events of the holocaust. Yes, the Germans played an obviously enormous part, and it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for them, but there were many other situations where others could have helped stop the tragedy and the deaths of millions of people.
"Cracking The Code Of Genocide: The Moral Psychology Of Rescuers, Bystanders, And Nazis During The Holocaust." Political Psychology 29.5 (2008): 699-736. Business Source Premier. Web. The Web.
On March 13, 1964 a woman by the name of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was coming back to her apartment in Queens, New York at 3:00 a.m. when she was impaled to death by a serial killer. According to the news, the said attack was about 30 minutes long. During the attack, Kitty Genovese screamed for help numerous times. The killer left the scene when the attention of a neighbor was attracted. Ten minutes later, the killer returned to the scene and murdered Genovese. It came to attention that 38 people witnessed the attack and murder, but all thirty-eight failed to report it until after the murder. This ordeal got the attention of many people including scientists and psychologists who wanted to figure out why this occurred. Later, the events that were published by the news were found to be false. It seemed as if the news was experiencing the bystander effect as well, because their information did not contribute to the actual facts. There were not 38 witnesses to the crime, but several had heard the screams and a few calls were made to the police during the attack. But there was still talk about something that affected the minds of people during emergency situations. This phenomenon has become known as the Bystander Effect. There were several cases that are fairly similar to the Genovese one. As well as the Genovese case, these occurrences attracted the attention of many scientists and even the news had something to say about “apathy.” Is the bystander effect real? My hypothesis is that the bystander effect is in fact, a real everyday occurrence that limits the help offered by people. This is due to the number of bystander present during a given situation. The Bystander Effect is the social psychological idea that refers to cases in whi...
...our hands, the people around us, and the way we perceive the victim and so on. But, these findings also force us to see how we perform under pressure; they show us that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors might have faced the same dilemma. What’s more frightening is that it makes it easier for us to understand how the good people in Nazi Germany and Rwanda stayed silent against the cruelty and mass murders that happened around them. Apart from being afraid, confused, coerced or unaware, these people could still convince themselves that it was not their personal responsibility to intervene and save the victims. We can overcome this bystander effect by understanding and educating ourselves about the forces that push us to become passive bystanders, and when a situation arises, we learn to overcome those reasons and take action, thus becoming the much needed active bystanders.