Childrens Literature and the Holocaust Essay

Over one million Jewish children died during the Holocaust. They were ripped out of their homes and taken away from their families, and stripped of their childhoods. Innocent lives were caught in a war that they were not able to stop. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he promised Germany that he would improve life their by getting rid of the one race that caused the problems, the Jews. Jews, including Jewish children, were sent to concentration camps, inspected, and if approved, were sent to work. All others would have been sent to be killed. Being sent to work did not ensure survival, children would be given very little food and water, and beaten severely, which caused their death. None of the children of the Holocaust will ever

     Throughout history the Jewish people have been scapegoats; whenever something was not going right they were the ones to blame. From Biblical times through to the Shakespearean Era, all the way to the Middle East Crisis and the creation of Israel, the Jews have been persecuted and blamed for the problems of the world. The most horrifying account of Jewish persecution is the holocaust, which took place in Europe from 1933 to 1945 when Adolf Hitler tried to eliminate all the people that he thought were inferior to the Germans, namely the Jews, because he wanted a pure Aryan State.

Although Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust, many other groups were targeted based on racial or political grounds. Other groups that were attacked by the Nazis included LGBTQ individuals, the physically and mentally disabled, Roma(gypsies), Poles, Slavic Peoples, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and members of political opposition groups. These Non-Jewish victims were not considered as victims of the Holocaust. So, why did Adolf Hitler kill 11 million people? First, we need to inspect Hitler’s crazy ideas. Adolf Hitler was the Chancellor of Germany during the Holocaust. He came to power in 1933, when Germany was experiencing financial trouble. Hitler promised the Germans that he would bring them great wealth and he stated that he would make

I am and SS officer. I was stationed at Auschwitz. More Jews were coming in every day. There were eighty to a cattle cart. There were so many families that had to go separate ways from one another. I had killed mothers and the babies and weakest of the men that couldn’t work. It was horrible, I do say. If I could say no I would never do it again. I loved my country and Hitler at the time, so I was willing to do whatever it took to get noticed. I was then stationed at a woman’s concentration camp. They all had gotten shaved, had no gold teeth, and had had tattoos on their arms. It was their identification code. They were so skinny it was just skin stuck to the bones. They looked like corpses, but alive. I wonder how many died soon after.

The implications of the Holocaust and the extent to which perceptions of the event have shaped Jewish views of identity are among the most crucial in today’s society. Literature revealed that although children of Holocaust survivors and perpetrators did not experience events directly, they might suffer in some form. Jewish descendants experience symptoms of trauma and bear the burden of replacing the dead. According to clinical experience and empirical research, this clinical population seems to have specific disturbances focused on difficulties in coping with stress and a high vulnerability to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This literature review will focus first on how trauma is transmitted and will then discuss the existence of any indicators of psychopathology in the offspring of Holocaust survivors.

From 1933 to 1945, millions of lives were thrown into chaos because of the Holocaust. Families were ripped apart and values were washed away as citizens were forcefully placed in concentration camps to either be immediately killed or to work until they died. Every person within the camps faced unthinkable trauma. Once everyone was released, the prisoners began to search for lost loved ones and a sense of normality. However, the anguish did not end with the end of the Holocaust. Following the Holocaust, first generation survivors developed abnormal values, societal dependence, and a need to avoid the topic of the Holocaust as an effect of their trauma; these side effects were then passed down to future generations

The Holocaust was the murder and persecution of approximately 6 million Jews and many others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis came to power in Germany in January of 1933. The Nazis thought that the “inferior” Jews were a threat to the “racially superior” German racial community. The death camps were operated from 1941 to 1945, and many people lost their lives or were forced to work in concentration camps during these years. The story leading up to the Holocaust, how the terrible event affected people’s lives, and how it came to and end are all topics that make this historic event worth learning about.

First, forced to leave your home and everything they worked for to move into a

More than 11 million people were victims of the Holocaust. Only over 200,000 of the victims survived, but in many schools, their stories are left untold. While it may be true that the facts about the Holocaust are rather mortifying, students can benefit from learning them. Many people choose to ignore the benefits, and do not teach it, but it’s history and history must be taught. If not ignoring that, they’ll say they have too much content to cover, but that statement is flawed in a multitude of ways.

The Holocaust of 1933-1945, was the systematic killing of millions of European Jews by the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazis) (Webster, 430). This project showed the treacherous treatment towards all Jews of that era. Though many fought against this horrific genocide, the officials had already determined in their minds to exterminate the Jews. Thus, the Holocaust was a malicious movement that broke up many homes, brought immense despair, and congregated great discrimination. The Holocaust was an act of Hell on earth.

A very shocking moment in people’s life is when they are kids and they live during the holocaust. Children in the holocaust were beaten, tortured and killed in either a concentration camp or death camp. If they did survive

The holocaust, or Shoah was a systematic, planned program of genocide to exterminate all Jews. This government based program was carried out by Hitler, and its allies in the Nazi army during world war two. Approximately 6 million Jews were killed, and if the murder of the Romani, Soviet civilians and prisoners, the disabled, homosexuals, and others who apposed to Hitler’s religious, political and social views were counted, this number would be more like 11 to 17 million. The holocaust is generally described with two periods, 1933-1939, and 1939-1945, the end of WWII.

“The central issue in studying the offspring of holocaust survivors has always been the eventual emergence of various psychopathological symptoms in those offspring as a direct or an indirect of parental traumatization and ensuing their psychological and psychopathological outcomes” (Last 72). All Holocaust survivors have always had some trauma. The offspring of Holocaust survivors have also had psychological and psychopathological outcomes that they will suffer from for the rest of their lives. “It has been assumed that survivors of such a large-scale man-made disasters as the holocaust cannot but bear within them permanent scars signifying and representing their dreadful experiences” (Last 73). This shows that that survivors and their offspring will have the trauma forever. The events that took place so many years ago will scar even the next generation because of how tragic this terrible disaster was. Last writes, “…can be traced to Holocaust experiences. These include lasting depression; anxiety, emotional liability, and irritability; relentless nightmares; a sense of depletion, of despair and alienation; obsessional ruminations, guilt feelings; failing memory and difficulties in concentration; fatique; and a variety of psychomatic complaints” (75). This shows some of the symptoms someone with trauma could have and there are a ton of them. This could affect someone’s job, their education, and their social life. The post-trauma will hurt people permanently and all of this because they were

Eighteen million Europeans went through the Nazi concentration camps. Eleven million of them died, almost half of them at Auschwitz alone.1 Concentration camps are a revolting and embarrassing part of the world’s history. There is no doubt that concentration camps are a dark and depressing topic. Despite this, it is a subject that needs to be brought out into the open. The world needs to be educated on the tragedies of the concentration camps to prevent the reoccurrence of the Holocaust. Hitler’s camps imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of Jews for over five years. Life in the Nazi concentration camps was full of terror and death for its individual prisoners as well as the entire Jewish

In the article “Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory,” Marianne Hirsch discusses generational memory and how second-generation memory operates in relation to catastrophic events such as the Holocaust. Furthermore, Hirsch demonstrates that cultural and generational trauma shape the identity and feelings of those who identify with catastrophe regardless of them actually experiencing tragedy.