...Alexia Gonzalez Political Science 4823: The Holocaust/ the Shoah Final Paper December 12, 2013 The Comparative Analysis of the Holocaust Ethnic cleansing and genocide are considered to coexist in a spectrum of assaults on nations or religio-ethnic groups. These threats were more prominent during the 20th century which caused massive violations of human rights and jeopardized the overall security of humans. Determinants of ethnic cleansing and genocide root from socio-political factors influenced by deeply embedded ideologies which are manifested by political leaders of specific regime types. During World War II, German authorities targeted Jews and other minority groups like the gypsies and Pols due to their perceived racial inferiority. The German ideology in attempt to eradicate these auxiliary groups led to the conflict known as the Shoah. The Shoah is the biblical word meaning destruction and it is the standard Hebrew term for the murder of European Jewry. The Shoah was the systematic, bureaucratic and state sponsored persecution of six million Jews. Comparable to other ethnic based genocides, Germans believed they were racially superior and that Jews were inferior; and deemed a threat to the “German racial community” resulting in their mass murder. Various interpretations of the Shoah has given rise to similar attitudes and opinions regarding its historical events. The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, is one of the largest resources of its kind which includes...
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...Vladka Meed’s Life During the holocaust there were many bystanders and not as many upstanders but they are the heroes of the holocaust. The heroes of the holocaust are people such as Vladka Meed and helped as many people as they could. Vladka Meed risked her life by going on the other side of the wall in The Warsaw Ghetto to smuggle weapons and ammunition, she also helped hide some of the surviving Jews. Vladka Meed’s childhood was an ordinary childhood, but when she got older her life started to change when the Nazis invaded Poland. At birth her given name was Feigele Peltel. She and Benjamin Meed changed their names to go to America. Vladka Meed’s childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto. She was born in 1923 in Warsaw, Poland. Her father was a factory...
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...this is an estimate of how many people died in the Holocaust. “Well over a million people are known to have died in the ghettos” (Wood 63). The book, A Lucky Child, is read by millions, but without Thomas Buergenthal no one would be able to read this book. So him surviving the Holocaust helps others learn more about the Holocaust. “One of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, Buergenthal spent four of the first ten years of his life in Nazi concentration camps” ( Pasqualucci). Although so many people died in the Holocaust, Thomas Buergenthal’s story shows, no matter what someone has been through, they can always overcome the challenges of life. First off, For Thomas Buergenthal life before the Holocaust was pretty...
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...Test: Maus – Question Chosen 4 4 – The opening prologue is the only part of the book that shows Art during his childhood and from that scene we can begin to realize why it is that the Holocaust plays such a dominant role in his psyche. Both page 5 and 6 show how it is like being a kid who parents went through the Holocaust. Art breaks his roller-skate and has his feelings hurt because his friends leave him behind. This experience is fairly ordinary, most common parents when confronted with this kind of situation would offer support and comfort their injured child. However, when Artie tells his dad what happened, Vladek immediately compares the situation to the Holocaust. Moreover, it seems that very likely that he compared every situation to the Holocaust, consequently, cementing those events in the mind of his son. So the first two pages illustrate not only the reasons for Arts’ continuing obsession with the Holocaust, but also the fact that the events of such tragedy are never far from Vladek own thoughts. In chapter one we can clearly understand Art-Vladek relationship, they are not particularly close and they don’t have any spontaneous manner around each other. Guiltiness is also one major theme in their relationship; Artie feels that he doesn’t treat his father as well as he should. Evidence of this guiltiness appears on the very first panel of the first page, he says. “I hadn’t seem him in a long time – we weren’t that close.” Another two scenes that pretty much...
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...List Essay Oskar Schindler would never have been anyone’s ideal savior, especially for the Jewish community. He was an open member of the Nazi party, a womanizer, a gambler, an alcoholic, and an extremely money hungry man, but insight of all of this he was successfully able to rescue over twelve hundred Jewish men and women from death. Schindler was a very tall and handsome man. Needless to say, he was adored by all the young women he met eyes with. However, Schindler fell for a beautiful young girl named Emily. After only six weeks of courtship, they were married. Sadly, after only a few months of marriage, Schindler began to heavily abuse alcohol. He also had several affairs resulting in two children out of wedlock. In 1929, during the Great Depression, the Schindler family business went bankrupt. At this time, Schindler’s father left his mother, and she died soon after. Finding himself jobless, Schindler sought work in nearby Poland as a machinery salesman. The saving of the first Schindler Jews began in 1939, when he came to Krakow in the wake of the German invasion. In Krakow, he took over two previously Jewish owned companies that dealt with the manufacture and sales of kitchenware products. In one of the businesses, however, Schindler was merely a trustee. Looking more for his own power, he opened up a small enamel shop right outside of Krakow near the Jewish ghetto. Here, he employed mostly Jewish workers. This in turn saved them from being deported to...
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...Mike Jones History 122 Holocaust Paper To what extent was the holocaust a European Event? There is much evidence leading scholars to ascertain that the Holocaust was indeed a European Event and not just the misdeeds of a lost leader. It is hard to point a finger at any one individual, let alone a single country, and be content in saying that all the blame for the events that occurred during the Holocaust rests with a single vessel. In “Hitler’s European Holocaust Helpers” we immediately realize that there was much collusion amongst neighboring nations in promoting the agenda set forth by the Nazi Party. A myriad of nations had blood on their hands at the end of the war. How much blame can be attributed to the aiding parties is up for speculation. Many people might assume that the events that took place across Europe, to the Jewish people, can be solely attributed to German soldiers, Nazi’s, and secret police. If that were indeed true Nazi Germany would have been the utopian model for political organization and discipline. But this was not the case and many of the Jews who were persecuted were thrown at the feet of Germany by their own nation. Many nations such as Ukraine, France, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Lithuania, Poland, Denmark and Netherlands, all played integral roles in greasing the wheels of the Genocide Machine that the Nazi regime was whole heartedly pushing forth. The readings we examined show clear evidence that each nation played their part to the tee...
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...Emma Contreras March, 6, 2024 8M Holocaust Research Paper “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” Yehuda Bauer, a Holocaust survivor, stated this inspirational quote. It is stating that no one should have to be a victim of any difficult situation, and no one should be the one doing it to someone. However, the worst of all is being a bystander. You should do something about it, not just watch it happen. This relates to the Holocaust. The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah in Hebrew, was a time when Jews were discriminated against. Germany was in serious financial trouble due to the effects of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. Germany needed somebody to blame for their...
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...Last week, students at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, had a visit from Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family during the Holocaust. What started off as an innocent letter for a class project, turned into a meet and greet with the famous protector of Anne Frank. After reading The Diary of Anne Frank, Erin Gruwell, the high school English teacher, had come up with the idea to have her sophomore students write letters to Miep Gies. The students were writing about how they felt about Anne’s story and their own experiences in their lives. The students were so inspired that they were determined to actually sendthe letters they wrote and meet Ms Gies. Considering that the school could not supply the funds to fly out...
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...The population of the Jewish community once flourished with pride but that all soon came to a halt. During the World War II the Holocaust began liquidating all Jews by placing them in death camps or filthy ghettos. They had many rules to abide by however, that did not stop them from resisting. During the Holocaust, Jews used armed and unarmed forms of resistance in order to retain their humanity. Unarmed resistance was just one way the Jewish population rebelled against the Nazis without using physical harm. One example of this type of resistance was the use of books and libraries in the ghettos. “Jews smuggled books and manuscripts into may ghettos for safekeeping and opened underground libraries in numerous ghettos” (“Spiritual”). The Jewish...
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...The Holocaust: Suggested Reading There is a wealth of information about the Holocaust. So much has been written, in fact, that it can be difficult to determine where to start. This reading list is collected from recommendations from other members of The Holocaust History Project. It is not a complete bibliography but represents our opinion as to what are the most useful starting places for research. Since this list concentrates on works that are easily available and useful to a person unacquainted with the history of the Holocaust, many excellent books which are rare or out of print are not listed. Another class of books that are not included is works that are controversial because of their contents or the unusual theories they propose. Some of these are excellent works, others are not. But we feel that the reader for whom this list was compiled would not have the knowledge needed to evaluate these discussions of the legitimate controversies about the Holocaust. Just as a medical student must learn anatomy before he or she is taught surgery, someone studying the Holocaust must know the factual background before some of the more technical studies can be understood. As well as general works we have included books of specialized interest concerning the matters about which we at The Holocaust History Project are most frequently asked. Many of these books deal with more than one subject, but in the interest of brevity we have not cited a book more than once. General history of the...
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...10, 2015 If Humans are Animals, are Animals Humans? The very dramatic and dark, graphic novel, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, by Art Spiegelman invites us readers to a hands on account of a Polish Jew’s horrific journey through the unforgettable Holocaust. Maus is not the ordinary comic that you would typically read, but instead, exemplifies another level of genre that fights the “norms” of a comic. Art Spiegelman takes his audience outside of their comfort zone and creatively imbeds a plot twist. For example, as stated in, Understanding Comics, McCloud simply states, “Comics were those bright, colorful magazines filled with bad art, stupid stories and guys in tights” (McCloud 2). Yet, we observe nothing of this sort of depiction either through imagery or language. Within this graphic novel, there are harsh depictions of Jews, Poles and Germans. The careful detail to language and cruel words are loaded with intense tone. As the readers, we encounter several historical points-of-view that Vladek Spiegelman presents: the pre-Holocaust, the Holocaust, and the post-Holocaust that he unearths, layer by layer. He engages his readers through his vivid traumatic encounters along with the sad misfortunes that took place during the Holocaust. Art Spiegelman’s audience can be directed towards those who are engaged by historical autobiographies and, equally so, an audience who seeks to revel in the pain and suffering of others; also he provides a way to understand catharsis. Art Spiegelman...
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...One cannot fathom the difficulty a young girl would face growing up during a time of war and chaos. In the autobiographies Persepolis and The Dairy of a Young Girl, the reader is shown that both main characters Marjane Satrapi and Anne Frank lived similar yet different lives. Their lives, as told in their autobiographies, consisted of adversity, cultural conflicts, and political issues, while after their novels were published both Anne and Marjane rose to fame. Anne, born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt Germany, shares her personal experiences and first-hand encounters during World War II in her novel. Anne along with her upper-middle-class family; which included her mother Edith, father Otto and sister Margot, fled Nazi persecution of Jews and went into hiding for two years. Her...
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...It has become quite ordinary to not think about the past. Sure it gets taught and everyone knows it’s there but people never want to look back. Out of shame? Fear? In today’s day, we respect the past but rarely delve into it except for certain days. Elie Wiesel’s book Night is the self-account of Wiesel’s life in the Holocaust. It reflects back to the time through the eyes of a Jewish boy living in the awful conditions. It tells the story from the first few steps that Hitler takes, to when the camps was liberated. Wiesel delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity. The Final Days is a film about resistance in Nazi Germany of one woman in particular. The movie starts off showing the main character having fun and there is light and laughter. This quickly changes as it shows her with members of the White Rose, an Anti-Nazi organization. She was caught and found guilty. This movie is a true story based on an actual Sophie Scholl who lived throughout this and was a member of the White Rose. Although one is about standing up for your rights not matter the consequence, and one is about knowing when hope is but a lost phrase, barely living in your mind. While that is all true, they also have a lot of differences, for instance, they have very different main characters who come from different parts and are effected by the war in different ways, each story is told in very different ways and each has its own meaning, and they have different...
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...person's (or group's) power over another person (or group). Recently, I have learned the going-on of one of the most tragic events ever, The Shoah. Through this learning I have derived some profound insights into not only myself, but others. My World Geography class researched acts of the Holocaust and discussed them at length. These exercises changed me, forever. They provided an experience that was incredibly valuable in changing my view on a variety of things: the role of bystanders, empathy, the power of little things, and how to react. Therefore, studying the Holocaust has changed my view and reaction to bullying, which is now focused on both recognizing and stopping bullying. The first thing we discussed about the Holocaust was the string of continuous discriminatory acts against the Jews. It was a changing moment for me. Before then, I had supposed the Holocaust as a random act of sorts - an event without roots before it. I was wrong. I learned that bigotry against Jews had been happening for centuries. It started in 70 A.D. and continued building and building and building. This genealogy of Jewish hatred made me rethink how I viewed small acts of bullying within my own life. Now, instead of seeing a small act of bullying and ignoring it, I see that small act as a piece, a piece of a chain that was the continued abuse against a certain person or group. Recognition. It was like a switch flipped, I got it. The...
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...“We are all ordinary people but even an ordinary person can within their own small ways turn on a small light in a dark room.” Miep Gies A Brief Summary of the movie Freedom Writers Freedom Writers is a 1990s film which tells the story of Erin Gruwell, a novice teacher and her interaction with a group of students at Wilson High School, located in Long Beach Los Angeles. Through shared experiences and writing she helps the students to become writers themselves. In the beginning of the film, Ms. G, as she was called by her students, had difficulty establishing a connection with her students and turns to her father and husband for support. Her offers guidance, but not the support she seeks. Her husband distances himself from her work and eventually their relationship. Ms. G in turn, dedicates herself to teaching her students, leaving little time for nothing else. She takes on part-time jobs to buy books for the students and spends late nights working in the classroom. The Head of Department and the faculty at large contributes little to helping Erin in the classroom. They offer advice based on institutional standards and past performance of the students, some staff suggesting that the students simply “don’t want to learn.” At the center of the film, lie the stories of the students. The students are skeptical of Ms. G and her interest in their lives. Initially, they resist her attempts and refuse to cross the self-inflicted boundaries they have designated...
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