...Holocaust. The Holocaust was a shameful part of our past, where the Jews of Europe and other minorities were persecuted by Nazi Germany. The Nazis treated them inhumanely in concentration camps, forcing them to endure harsh working and living conditions as they tortured and killed them. To this day, survivors are telling the tales of how it changed their lives. In the memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel, he talks about the terrible and inhumane things he had to endure. The Nazis had purposely treated these innocent, everyday people inhumanely every single day they were in their custody. The Nazis were a very cruel group of people who absolutely despised the Jewish population and all they stood for. When they believed the Jews stepped out of line they resorted to the extreme punishments, most inhumane. The memoir Night gives a picture of this when Wiesel writes about a time he had caught an officer doing something he shouldn’t have been doing, “I obeyed. Then I was aware of nothing but the...
Words: 788 - Pages: 4
...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...
Words: 1825 - Pages: 8
...Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” Introduction The book “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” was published in 1992. The book is written by Christopher Browning. It talks about the Holocaust, which involved the killing of the Jewish people by the Nazis. The event took place between 1942 and 1943. The book is mainly based on the findings of a study conducted on the causative factors made evident in the testimonies of people serving in German Reserve Unit 101. The study was carried out in the 1960s. The Police Battalion 101 was ordered to massacre and deport Jews living in Poland. At the time, the country was occupied by the Germans. The German legal investigations involved 210 of the men 20 years later. The investigations looked into war crimes in order to press charges against certain members of the government. The men who carried out these atrocities were middle-aged. Their average age was 39 years (Browning 48). Surprisingly, they seemed to have voluntarily taken part in the exercise. The reason is that none of them was coerced to participate in the killings. The men would end up following the orders given in spite of the fact that they were contrary to what they deemed right. In this paper, the author will analyze some of the reasons that led the men to commit such inhumane acts. The soldiers obeyed the orders in spite of the fact that they were aware of the effects of their actions. In addition, the author of this paper...
Words: 1187 - Pages: 5
...place in Auschwitz and Buchenwald which are both Nazi Germany concentration camps. The memoir depicts his experiences with his father in those concentration camps. ‘Night’ takes the reader on a journey where Eliezer, who was only 15 and his family, along with many other Jews, were forcibly removed from their hometown and transported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He wrote about their battle for survival, and of his battle with God for a way to understand the spiteful cruelty he witnesses each day as well as his increasing disgust with humanity due to the inhumane treatment of the Jews and how they were...
Words: 1143 - Pages: 5
...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 had one thing on his mind, a pure Aryan race with complete world domination. Jews were subjected to humiliation through the Anti-Jewish Laws. The seven most established laws in Germany were: Jews were forced from jobs in civil service and history, Jews were barred from most...
Words: 1521 - Pages: 7
...The Holocaust was a state-sponsored, bureaucratic and systematic persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis under the command of Adolf Hitler believed that Germans were racially superior while the Jews were considered as an inferior group whose presence in the new state would derail the expansionist desires of Adolf Hitler. The Jews were also considered as a threat to the German racial community. During the Holocaust the German authority also targeted other groups that were perceived to be racially inferior. On the contrary, the big slave trade is considered as the business that involved buying and selling of people, especially from Africa, for profit. These people were enslaved in the Capitalist Europe and were subjected to doing menial works such as tending the fields and working in mines (Franklin, 2000). Comparison of the Holocaust and the Slave Trade...
Words: 537 - Pages: 3
...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...
Words: 1235 - Pages: 5
...humanity that has occurred. Crimes against humanity are inhumane acts against a certain race or population. This one picture does not even give justice to the millions of people who have lost their lives due to racial profiling and not fitting in to what society thinks is “right”. In this picture there lays the arms of a survivor of one the biggest and devastating genocides the world has ever seen. Leon Greenman is just one of the millions of lives were either taken away or that will never be the same, physically or mentally . A tattoo is part of a permanent moment that can never be taken away and like Leon Greenman and many other survivors of the holocaust,it will always be a part of them. It is clear that there were permanent effects that the Holocaust made an impact on; it is clear looking at the picture of Leon Greenman, he was one the lucky ones who survived and his tattoo shows the proof. During the Holocaust Adolf Hitler did not think of the Jews as humans, he thought they were wastes of space and that they needed to be terminated in order for Germany to have a pure race. By doing this Hitler ordered that all individuals of Jewish descent would be transported to camps such as Auschwitz so either they were worked to death like cattle or immediately killed in gas chambers or other types of crimes against humanity that one could only imagine. These innocent individuals had done no crime but they were punished for being who they were.For some people when they first look at...
Words: 577 - Pages: 3
...in the worst of times. The Book Thief takes place in Nazi Germany, the era of torment and discrimination of Jews. It was a time “with clouds as mean as you’ve ever seen” (Wakefield). The sky was the color of death, as so many Jews were being killed and burned. The period was dominated by a population of people who had an animosity for Jews. Han Hubermann is a caring man, who in desperate times, isn’t persuaded to follow the Nazi ideals. In a society of prejudice, Hans is known as “the Jew painter...for painting Jewish houses” (Zusak 104). People who are kind towards...
Words: 462 - Pages: 2
...Nazi Germany had one major requirement if they wanted to be successful in the extermination the Jewish race: Dehumanization. The belittling of a person and their identity of a person puts an oppressor above the oppressed and sets up a course for action against the oppressed. The Nazis took advantage of this fact, as evident in the book Night by Elie Wiesel. Shaving the heads of the prisoners, the hanging of a child in front of thousands, and the civilians watching the prisoners fight to the death over bread are all prime examples shown by Elie of how dehumanization was used as a tactic in Nazi Germany. One of the first significant acts of dehumanization displayed in Night was the shaving of the heads of the Jewish people when they arrived...
Words: 639 - Pages: 3
...“justice”. They though that the Jews existing was a mistake and that they must carry on what Christ could not. They assumed that in order to give Christ proper justice, they must kill the ones who persecuted him in the first place and those are the Jews. A quote from Joseph Goebells on November 16, 1941 explained their intentions and why they were doing what they were doing. “ By reason of their birth and race, all Jews are part of a conspiracy against National Socialist Germany[…] The treatment we give them does them no wrong. They have more than deserved it.” One reason the Jews continued to be slaughtered like animals is because the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler loved the publicity he was getting from his peers whether they were for or against him. “It is good that we are preceded by an aura of terror to exterminate the Jewry.” - Adolf Hitler October 15, 1941 The Jewish people saw their harassment as harassment. They didn’t view it as punishment of God. During this time they lived in fear. The Jews in Germany couldn’t even trust their neighbors; afraid of them ratting to the Germans. “A house like millions of other, somewhere in Germany. Simple People, like you and me, live in this house. Don’t ask what they fear; they fear the Gestapo, of course. They fear the rampant secret denunciations. Friends see someone ringing the doorbell at an unusual hour. The fear is there; doors open furtively and the idated residents peek out to see who is affected.” - Lee Grundig, Survivor...
Words: 522 - Pages: 3
...Lord of the Flies Double Entry Journal 5-8 Conch: "Exposure to the sun had bleached the yellow and pink to near-white, and transparency." (78). The conch symbolizes law and democracy, and gives power to whoever has possession of it. However, throughout Lord of the Flies, the conch gradually loses its power and hold over the boys. The boys disregard the rules set during the first meeting by speaking without the conch and interrupting those who have the conch. As the conch loses power, democracy and law on the island fade. The boys no longer listen to rules, such as taking care of business on the rocks because the tide washes it away, and feel there is no true leader (this is indicated by the boys not giving Ralph the respect he deserves and not listening to his commands). The boy’s disregard for law is a flaw. It is natural for humans to rebel against the law because it is authority; however, law is needed because it keeps the savage nature...
Words: 1198 - Pages: 5
...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...
Words: 697 - Pages: 3
...Adolf Hitler came about when the Nazi Germany was defeated by the allied British in the year 1945[1]. Although Adolf Hitler was sparked World War II in Europe his defeat came in with destruction of property and loss of German lives because of his obstinacy, tough headedness and selfishness. Hitler’s poise that restricted him from accepting to surrender led to the destruction of infrastructure that he had already built. This paper aims to address the history of the Germans after World War II, the German economy and their living standards. The defeat of the Nazi Germany led to the split of Germany in a period known as the split of Germany after World War II. The country lost its war gains and territories in the East to the Soviet Union and Poland. The German population underwent much torture and suffering, about seven million of the German citizenry left Germany and died during their emigration because of starvation and hard labour. The most affected people were the prisoners serving their time in the prisons. Over ten million refugees who knew the German language well arrived in the country from other parts of the continent such as countries in Eastern and Central Europe[2]. Many of the German POWs were subjected to forced labour with industrial equipment...
Words: 1182 - Pages: 5
...Opposition: a group of people who strongly oppose what is currently happening. During the Nazi reign, many people in Denmark, France and Poland, strongly resisted Hitler and his beliefs, and would do anything to stop him and his genocide. Denmark didn’t like any of Hitler's beliefs and they thought they were cruel and inhumane. Next, France resisted the Nazis heavily. Also, Poland did not like Hitler and also opposed him. Indeed, Denmark, France, and Poland opposed the Nazis and they did all that they could to resist them or stop them. During World War II in Denmark, the Danish decided to take a stand against Nazi, Germany. The Danish were informed about the Nazi raid and took action to make sure that little ,or no Jews were taken. The Danish moved all of their Jews into the safety of Sweden by fishing boats, Only 600 Jews of the 8000 population was discovered and deported to the Concentration Camps . Georg Duckwitz, informed the Danish about a second raid. The Jewish quickly hid in nearby homes or in churches. Only 284 of the 8000 Jews were found. The Bopa was made to oppose Capitalism with Communism. Students tried to join the Bopa but the Bopa thought the students could be spies, so the Bopa turned them down....
Words: 635 - Pages: 3
