...Malicious ideologies have enabled groups of people to inflict inhumane violence on other members of society through compliance to authority. Such historical events of massive genocides include the Holocaust; where Nazi soldiers killed six million innocent Jewish people based on their political and ethical reasoning. Troubled by situations of this nature, Stanley Milgram held a collection of experiments that his book “Obedience to Authority” outlines. Milgram tells us that “the aim of the study was to find when and how people defy authority in the face of clear moral imperatives” ( 4). Milgram found that there are social forces which allow populations to commit morally conflicting acts against other populations. The fundamental variable for this influence is ideology; which is defined in Webster’s dictionary as “a systematic body of concepts, especially about human life or culture”(“ideology”). Ideologies accompanied by social contagions, admit ordinary individuals to transgress in inhumane conformed evils. The obedient subjects of Milgram’s studies and the Nazi soldiers alike are not all necessarily sadistic psychopaths. Rather, they’re a result of ideological social conformity. It has been a commonly accepted idea that those who participated in the holocaust were all individually psychopaths, but conformity to a corrupt authority’s dogma influences ordinary people to behave malevolently. Between 1941- 1945, fifty-five thousand Nazi soldiers worked at death and work camps...
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...The Milgram Experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram who was a psychologist at Yale University. He invented this study to explore the issue of authority. Milgram wanted to understand obedience. Milgram asked the question, “What is there in human nature that allows an individual to act without any restraints whatsoever that allows us to act inhumane and not limited by compassion or conscience.” This experiment allowed insight into the topic of conflict between obedience to authority and conscience. How far would people proceed in obeying authority if it involved hurting another person? In order to conduct this experiment Milgram used male subjects from 20 to 50 years old. The authority figure told the subjects they were testing to see if people...
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...“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.” This is a quote from Josef Mengele, a doctor who performed medical experiments during the Holocaust. When the true extent of the Holocaust was found out many people didn't want to believe that it was true, especially the medical experiments. Even today, citizens don’t truly know what these “medical procedures” entailed. The Nazi medical experiments were one of the worst monstrosities that took place during the Holocaust. The National Socialist German Workers' Party medical experiments were classified in three different groups; each one to help the Nazis win World War II. The first category was “War Efforts”. Many German soldiers would die from hypothermia, altitude sickness,...
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...“Night” Essay. The Holocaust (also called Shoah in Hebrew) refers to the period from January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945, when the war in Europe ended. During this time, Jews in Europe were subjected to harsh persecution that ultimately led to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews (1.5 million of these being children) and the destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities. The Jews were the victims of Hitler’s plan to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe. After the holocaust one of few survivors Elie Wiesel wrote a book called “Night” which was basically about the suffering all Jews had to go through. In this book Elie uses motifs to reveal the theme that the worst suffering comes from man’s own inhumanity to man. One of the motifs Elie uses to reveal the theme was how badly the Nazi soldiers treated their fellow human. First example was when the Nazi’s arrived at first they treated the Jews politely while living in their homes and acted quite civil then the Jews started to believe they were in no danger but Little by little, the soldiers took away their freedom—the leaders of the Jewish community were arrested; the Jewish people were put under house arrest; all their valuables were confiscated; the Jews were forced to wear a yellow star; the Jewish people were forced into ghettos; the ghettos were emptied and the people deported to concentration camps. This shows how the Nazi went from being human to dehumanizing their fellow human...
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...19 March 2012 Life during the Holocaust: Life in the ghettos, Dr. Mengele’s medical care, and food in the camps Genocide during WWII was unbelievably cruel and awful. The Holocaust was sure to be remembered from this time period and have permanently engraved horrible memories into those who survived. During the Holocaust many victims suffered while living in the ghettos, soon to reach the camps they also suffered there as well. The encounters with Dr. Mengele were unbearable too. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night is very important especially the fact that it accurately describes what really happened during the Holocaust. One of these many reasons is that Wiesel was an actual survivor of the Holocaust. His descriptions of his experiences in the ghettos, encounters with Dr. Mengele and his trouble with small amounts of food in the camp greatly make us only able to imagine what he went through. Elie Wiesel in his memoir Night, along with other victims of the Holocaust was faced with many obstacles while living in the ghettos, encounters with Dr. Mengele and forced labor. Living in the ghettos was the first step in being dehumanized. Elie Wiesel describes these experiences in his memoir Night. One example of these experiences that were described by Elie was that decrees were to be made in the Jewish ghettos. “We were no longer allowed to go into restaurants or cafes, attend the synagogue and must be in at sic o’ clock.”(Wiesel 9). These are for the Jews in the ghettos prior to full...
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...Penn State HIST 121 Term Paper 23 April 2014 Children of the Holocaust This research essay is about the devastating and gruesome incidents pertaining to the children of the holocaust. This essay will cover the unbelievable lives these children had to live and the horrible pain they had to undergo threw this war of extermination. They suffered losses of family, friends, and many became orphaned or homeless. The holocaust took the lives of about 6 million Jewish men, women, and children. There were about 1.6 million Jewish children consisting from infants to teens living in Europe around the start of World War 2. Only about 11 percent of this range of children made it through the war. A lot of the parents chose to hide their children so they would have a better chance of surviving. The Jewish children were extremely discriminated against and were terribly affected by the Holocaust. Jewish children, along with their families, experienced persecution of revocation of citizenship, reduction of food ration, confiscations, deprivation of schooling and restricted access to public institutions. Many people could not figure out why the Jewish children were hated, or why they had to be prisoners. These children were left homeless and many orphaned. They had seen the Nazis murder their parents, siblings, relatives, and close friends. They had to endure starvation, sickness, and awful labor and other brutal acts until they were sent to gas chambers at the camps. Hiding a child...
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...The Forgotten Holocaust The majority of the population when asked the question, “Could a genocide on the scale of the holocaust take place without the world acknowledging it?” The common answer would be that a killing of that size would be impossible to hide; but for the Japanese it was not. The crimes of mass murder and human experimentation committed by the Japanese Imperial army were horrendous; with a death toll comparable to the Holocaust, along with the unimaginable crimes committed by the notorious Unit 731, this was one of the most undocumented genocides in history. History of the Japanese Imperial Army Between the years of 1867-1945 the Japanese Imperial Army grew to an enormous size of around six million troops (Rummel). An army of this size had never been organized, which is why the entire continent of Asia feared that the Japanese would have the power to take over Asia. In previous genocides, the groups committing the killings...
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...time was a very traumatic time for many jews, but one thing that happened during the time sticks out the most, his name is Josef Mengele. Josef Mengele is an infamous party during the holocaust, he spent his time in Auschwitz experimenting on the prisoners. Dr. Mengele became very intrigued in experimenting on twins. According to “Medical Experiments of the Holocaust and Nazi Medicine”, “The twins were allowed to keep their hair for the first several days of the examination. After All the living data was taken the twins would be killed by a single injection of chloroform in the heart”(Medical 1). This quote shows how dangerous human experimentation can truly be in the wrong hands. The holocaust is a perfect example on how human testing can be unethical and just plain inhumane. After this three weeks of tortuous medical examinations they were taken two the dissection laboratory. According to “Medical Experiments of the Holocaust and Nazi Medicine,“Using two doctors, each twin was simultaneously given an injection in the heart, taking their lives. They were dissected and their organs were sent to the Institute of Biological Racial and Evolutionary Research Berlin”(Medical 1). This quote is exemplifies what true horrors human testing can be in the hands of a scientist. Dr. Mengele has made many experiments on Auschwitz prisoners such as: Freezing Hypothermia,...
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...Milgram intended to break down the understanding of why people allowed the Holocaust to happen, but many people question the necessity of his experiment. In the article Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority, we learn that Milgram set up an experiment to see if the subjects would shock someone to the point of physical harm in order to obey the authority of a scientist. The fact of the matter is, in order to understand things they must be tested. Whether or not this experiment seemed like a necessity, it would have eventually been carried out in some fashion in order to understand an event such as the Holocaust. Milgram examined the obedience...
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...“What is the first thing that comes to mind when the phrase ‘World War II’ is mentioned?” The typical response to this question will almost always be “Hitler and his cruelty toward Jews.” What is strange about this answer, is the fact that the majority of people do not realize what actually occurred in Europe during this time. To most people, the Holocaust was an “event” where many Jews were killed by Nazis. In fact, the Holocaust was a tragic point in history which many believe never occurred, or do not realize the suffering behind the widespread destruction. The pain and conditions exper- ienced by the victims is unimaginable by any standards. In the early 1930’s, the United States was reveling in turmoil. Eastern Europe was on the verge of power, and in a small western European country called Germany, trouble was brewing. In 1933, Europeans had no worries beyond their daily struggle to earn money, put food on their family's table, and clothes on their children's backs. This would all change in a matter of months. Whatever type of life a person had built or molded for themselves, it was all to come to a crashing halt if they did not conform to Hitler’s specifications. On January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. In March 1933, with the building of the Dachau concentration camp, “Adolf Hitler's rising became one of the swiftest, most destructive leaderships in recorded human existence” (Bauer 12). After his inception as ruler of Germany, Adolf Hitler...
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...In this experiment, an individual was directed by a scientist to shock a man, with each shock more powerful than the last, whenever he got a question wrong. Scientists predicted that only 1% of the volunteers would shock an individual to the highest amount of voltage, but surprisingly, approximately “65% of very typical people will give electric shocks to someone in another room if they are told to do so by an experimenter in a lab coat,” (Aron 13). One of the volunteers continued to shock the man, but finally stopped after at least 300 volts was reached. This experiment reflects how an individual can believe that their actions are justified, and how power affects the mindset and actions of individuals. However, once the volunteer’s guilty conscience reached its limit, the volunteer put a stop to shocking the other man and went against the authoritative figure’s directions. This experiment has aspects that support the theory of how people blindly obey an authority figure; individuals that practice baleful beliefs such as communism have become prominent figures due to the acquired blind support from others, even though the ideas that they assume have unappealing...
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...The Holocaust is one of the biggest and most widely known genocides in history. The Holocaust is famous for introducing many killing methods, such as the infamous gas chambers. One thing the Nazis were notorious for, other than the mass killings, was the horrible treatment of their prisoners. Millions of prisoners died under the Nazis due to various factors, such as disease, abuse by the guards, and the weather. Firstly, the prisoners were severely abused by the prison guards. The guards were quiet sadistic towards the prisoners and abusing them was a manifestation of it. The guard’s and prison staff’s abuse towards the prisoners varied. It would range from beatings to medical experiments. The guards would look for various reasons to beat the...
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...NAZI MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION German doctors conducted a series of brutal medical experiments between 1939 and 1945 during the Holocaust. It has always been particularly hard to comprehend physician torture when their job is to heal, not harm. The psychology of the perpetrator, group dynamics, and the social context in Germany are extremely important factors when assessing how and why doctors performed such evil unconsented medical experiments. These physicians were not inhumane murderers; however, there were forceful internal and external influences that allowed them to participate in such cruelty. There were a number of psychological tactics, which these physicians used to allow themselves to perform such vicious acts. Understanding the...
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...The Holocaust The Holocaust was a tragic event that lasted from 1933-1945 for a total of twelve years. The group of people that was the cause of this was known as the Nazis, their leader’s name was Adolf Hitler. He gained power of Chancellor in 1933, the first year of the Holocaust (Holocaust). Hitler had violence in his past, so it was no surprise when he wanted to cause more harm and violence to others. “He thought that the Jews were an “alien” threat to the German racial purity and community” (Concentration). The Holocaust went on during the battle of World War II. The Holocaust was a tragic event that should never happen again, and here is a few things that went on during these brutal twelve years. The first concentration...
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...obedience. Blind obedience is when a person follows authority without even thinking about the consequences that the order to which they are obeying carries. It’s as if the authority figures are puppeteers and the people blindly obeying them the puppets. Puppeteers and their puppets best illustrate the relationship between the authority figure and the people doing horrendous actions, because being obedient is the right thing to do. So many events in history have proven how inhumane human beings can be when following authority. Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted one of the most controversial experiments in history, in attempt to demonstrate how individuals can lose themselves to an authority figure. Milgram’s experiment was called “Obedience to Authority.” Theodore Dalrymple wrote an article titled, “Just do What the Pilot Tells You,” and in this article he said that Milgram “asked ordinary people to come to the psychology laboratories of Yale University to take part in an experiment to determine the effects of punishment on learning. The subjects were told to deliver electric shocks of increasing severity, from 15 to 450 volts, whenever a man who was supposed to learn pairs of words made a...
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