Chiune Sugihara

The artwork Blinded by the Light (1991) by Yasumasa Morimura is an appropriation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Blind Leading the Blind (1568) (Israel, 2005). Morimura has appropriated paintings and photographs throughout the ages, though The Blind Leading the Blind is the earliest dated work that Morimura has appropriated (Marsh, Watts, & Maylon, 1999). Morimura super-imposes a composite self-portrait on top of Bruegel’s painting, successfully changing the meaning of the piece. The different historical contexts of the two pieces in conjunction with appropriation allow the accumulation of ideas to present two separate meanings pertinent to the ideals of the times. Morimura’s simultaneous use of the historical and religious aspects of The

Jewish oppression occurs expeditiously. Eliezer and his family are deported to concentration camps in 1944. Eliezer’s destiny is changed by ignoring the admonishing cries he and his family receives about what is to come. “‘Jews, listen to me! That’s all I ask of you. No money. No pity. Just listen to me!’ he kept shouting in the synagogue...Even I did not believe him.” (7) Moishe the Beadle is in the first group of Jews that the Nazis deport. They take him along with many other Jews into a forest. They are deceived into digging deep trenches, lining up, and being shot, falling into the trenches they dug with their own hands. Moishe is the only one who escapes. He returns to Sighet to warn the Jews, but they refuse to listen to him. Pleading, Moishe asks someone - anyone - to believe him. He no longer wants to live, he only wants to prepare the Jews for the impending peril. Because Eliezer and his family refuse to listen to Moishe, they end up in concentration camps. If Eliezer and his family had listened to Moishe, their stories would not have ended as they did. Another example of

Imagine having everything taken away from you, your food, your rights, your family, and your life. That is what happened to Louie Zamperini and other other POWs at japanese prison camps. Louis Zamperini grew up in Torrance being a bad kid that everyone in his town disliked. Later in his life in high school he took on running, being trained by his brother pete. This turned his life around and everyone loved him. He started breaking records and adventally he went to the olympics. He was drafted into the air corp and was a bomber. He got stranded in the ocean and later was taken captive by the japanese, who tortured him. During his life Louie never gave up, he was unbroken. Even through the hardest things he had resiliency and showed redemption.

We live in a world of over seven billion people, how can one person even make a dent? It may not always be the action itself, but the impact that it has on a person. Never forget, never again, the words that resound in one’s head when thinking of Elie Wiesel's speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. We can never forget the stories of the lost, gone, and the survivors, so that we do not repeat their mistakes. Elie Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust, World War II, and life’s brutalities. In his lifetime Elie Wiesel experienced discrimination because he was Jewish. He was sent to labor camps because he practiced a different religion. However, many people of the world today are discriminated against because they act or look a little different. The

World War two displaced many Japanese and American POWs. Prisoners in camps were separated from the outside world and were made to feel invisible. Louie Zamperini was an American soldier who was stranded and felt invisible in many Japanese prisoner of war camps. He missed his home and he felt like nobody could see him. MIne Okubo was a Japanese-American citizen that lived in America and she did nothing wrong.

In society, women are often recognized as being the weakest and dependent gender while men are the most powerful. In Ihara Saikaku’s novel From Life of a Sensuous Women, he challenged the views on women by society and represented women as strong and powerful individuals. The novel was made of short stories where women used their sexuality to their advantage and to gain power over men. The women also did not follow the responsibility that society believes they should adhere to, such as marrying a man, having kids, and being the housewife who cooks, cleans and takes care of her family while her husband goes about his job. Instead, they lived with a loosed sexuality and had several lovers, which was not considered as to what the traditional women do. In addition to not being a housewife, the women had the ability to play sports and be good at them. These characteristics that were given to women challenged society and what they believe the ordinary women should be like. In From Life of a sensuous Woman, Saikaku showed how women might use the power of sexuality to overpower men, managed to question the traditional view of women as the compliant housewife, and challenged the assumptions of females as the weaker gender.

When many think of the Holocaust as a solely negative experience, and while it may seem easy to write the event off as a dark time in history that seems remote and unlikely to affect us today, there are some positive results, including the lessons that it brings for current and future humanity. The lessons that the Holocaust brings are applicable to every person in the world. While many of these lessons do focus on the negative aspects of the Holocaust, like what circumstances permit such a vast genocide and how many people can die because of widespread racial hatred, there are also those that focus on how some people, in all parts of Europe and throughout the world, retained their good human nature during the Holocaust. For example, what made some gentiles in Europe during that time willing and able to help Jews. Currently, Yad Vashem has recognized 26,513 rescuers throughout the world (Names), and the actual number of rescuers could likely be close to twice that amount (Baron,1). It is important that we analyze the reasons behind these rescuers’ choices to be upstanders instead of bystanders because we can learn about our own motivations when we face decisions between helping others and protecting ourselves, and possibly those we love, from harm. Fulfilling one’s self-interest was a potential motivation for helping Jews that will only be briefly addressed. This type of rescue potentially benefitted both the Jews and the Gentile rescuers; these Gentiles only helped Jews survive because they found personal gain, likely social or economic, in the action (Baron). However, in the situation that existed while rescuing the Jews, most efforts included the high possibility that both the rescuer and the rescued would end up worse off than they had begun with no potential for personal gain on either side. So those rescuers’ motivations are less easily explainable.

One man, Fred Korematsu, had fought against the internment camps and tried to earn Japanese- Americans rights and

In accordance with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order, he has the Japanese-Americans moved to internment camps because he wants to keep them safe from other Americans who are against anyone that is Japanese; however, when claiming that the military is going to protect the Japanese-Americans, the guns are faced inwards towards the Japanese-Americans, not outwards to anyone that can intrude and hurt them (Teaching With Documents: Documents and Photographs Related to Japanese Relocation During World War II). Oskar Schindler, a historical figure shown in Schindler’s List, is well aware of the plans that the Nazis and Hitler have for the Jews; he knows they are going to be killed because of their religion. Schindler, like the military in the United States, knows information that they are keeping disclosed. The United States military wants to hurt the Japanese-Americans or to use them in the European theater so that they will not ally with Japan (Teaching With Documents: Documents and Photographs Related to Japanese Relocation During World War II). Schindler lies to the Jews that works for him because he knows that they are going to be murdered, but he does not think he is meant to be their hero. He is a part of the Nazi party and is not supposed to care for the Jews, so he just uses them for money, giving them the false hope of security. That

Fred Korematsu also an American citizen of Japanese descent was convicted of not reporting to his concentration camp. His reason was that he was unwilling to leave his sweetheart, Endo. Fred Korematsu was arrested, convicted and also obtained a certiorari of the Supreme Court just like Gordon Hirabayashi.

In 1945, the interment of the Japanese officially ended. They began to leave the camps. However, many Japanese did not leave the camps, because they did not have any other place to go after the interment. Many had lost all of their money, valuables, and houses. They had no where else to go. They had no money because they were forced to sell all of their belongings before they left for the internment camps. However, they were forced to sell their belongings for very little, because they only had 48 hours notice before they were interned. Also, many of their belongings had

What God would let his people be burned, suffocated to death, separated from their families, and starved to death? Many people persecuted and sent to concentration camps questioned this thought. It was near impossible to keep faith at this time of torture. They felt as if God had abandoned his people, left to suffer the cruel events of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel grew up as a faithful and deeply spiritual young person. For a person of his age, he was greatly curious by his Jewish faith, he pursued Moishe the Beadle to deepen his spiritual understanding. Upon experiencing the torture of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel lost his faith completely. He found it impossible to believe that a God could allow his people to experience such torture. Upon surviving the Holocaust Elie Wiesel realized that faith is crucial to surviving without losing character. The hardships that Elie Wiesel faced in the concentration camps lead him to lose faith, until after when realizing it was crucial to keep faith in God despite the horrendous events of the Holocaust.

Although the world continues to face tragedy, little compares to that of the horrors millions of innocent Jews like Elie Wiesel faced, as they were deported from their homes, separated from their families and pushed around into different concentration camps where they were brutally tortured, killed, and discarded of by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany Army beginning in 1941. It wasn’t until April of 1945 that Elie along with the limited number of other survivors were finally liberated. This mid 20th century atrocity has come to be known as the Holocaust, a tragic part of history that will never be forgotten. It was because of that experience, that Elie Wiesel extensively depicted the events he faced through written and verbal accounts including the speech he gave entitled “The Perils of Indifference” on April 12, 1999. The speech was given at the 7th Millennium Evening at the White House, with an intent to create a kairotic moment with the public including the audiences it was broadcasted to, as an opportunity to explain a darker side of history, while also hopefully enlightening them for the future.

Her story is an example of a person who struggled with adversity but searched for a reason to hope. She has used her remarkable survival as an inspiration for those who have no reason to believe they can overcome struggles. She has a foundation named Citizenship Counts which teaches students about their rights and the importance of their citizenship. She has written many books about her experiences and her belief that hope will help a person overcome darkness. She travels the world today telling people her story to increase their knowledge of the Holocaust. Her story of survival serves of as an inspiration to people who are suffering and are looking for a reason to have hope.¹

Jewish prisoners to work at his factories. Although this act of utter courage and selflessness