The Nazi’s Warsaw ghetto brought out the worst in many people. Crammed into a few blocks with little to eat or drink, people were forced to fight for their survival. Some were affected worse than others—betraying family members and friends for a bite to eat was not uncommon. However, not everyone bore their worst. For a very few people, the dark times drove them to be the best they could, to fight tooth and nail for their people’s survival. They did not lose themselves and shrink to mere husks of their former selves—they remained strong and with resolve. Nowhere is this contrast more evident than between the two good friends Paul Bronski and Andrei Androfski. While Paul withered away as a person, unable to handle his great burden, Andrei …show more content…
He constantly scrambled to maintain both his position and his safety. In doing so, he opposed the resistance and ended up hurting the Jewish cause. After his son’s Bar Mitzvah, and a confrontation with his wife, he was completely drained. He became a sallow husk of a man, and eventually gave up, committing suicide. Andrei, however, fought tooth and nail until the end, leading the Jews in their resistance against the Germans. No one fought harder than Andrei, and in the end, he gave his life to protect those around him. Emotionally, Andrei and Paul were quite dissimilar. The only common ground they shared was that they were both under a lot of emotional stress. They differed completely in how they handled it. Andrei exhibited his stress in short, sporadic, and usually violent outbursts. For instance after finding his way back to Warsaw, he ended up sobbing on Gabriel’s doorstep, emotionally shattered. Within a few days, and with Gabriel’s support, he was back up and fighting. Another example is when he fights. During the original confrontation with the Germans, he fell into a wild bloodlust, continuing the onslaught far after his forces, and his body, have been decimated. Andrei’s biggest flaw is that he often lets his rage and desire for vindication blot out his better judgment. He tempered this by surrounding himself with more level-headed, albeit less courageous, friends such as Simon. With Andrei’s bravery and Simon’s judgment, they made
The concentration camps of the Holocaust were home to countless injustices to humanity. Not only were the prisoners starved to the brink of death, but they were also treated as animals, disciplined through beatings nearly every day. Most would not expect an ill-prepared young boy to survive such conditions. Nevertheless, in the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Wiesel defies the odds and survives to tell the story. Wiesel considers this survival merely luck, yet luck was not the only factor to come into play: his father had an even greater impact. Prior to their arrival at Auschwitz, Wiesel lacked a close relationship with his rather detached father; however, when faced by grueling concentration camp life, the bond between Wiesel and his father ultimately enables Wiesel’s survival.
In the early 1940s, over six million Jews were slaughtered due to the irrational belief of their imperfection. Each day, people make decisions, and those decisions are guided by thoughts, and everyone has the right to those opinion; however, many people fail to believe that their thoughts and actions can affect the lives of others. There are people with a strong moral compass that carry around the weight of the horrific actions of others such as Peter L. Fischl, author of the poem, “To the Little Polish Boy Standing with His Arms Up.” Throughout the poem, the author expresses how some people are in denial but others are haunted by the horrific events of the past. The narrator speaks to this young Polish boy, standing with his arms above his head, waiting patiently for his demise. Life is full of difficulties; if there were no struggles in life then it would not be life at all. The author creates a lead into the poem with the title, using a symbol for vulnerability. If someone stands with their arms in the air it means they are surrendering, they are vulnerable and defenseless. As the little Polish boy walks past the guards, he has his arms raised, knowing he has no say in what is yet to come. In the poem “To the Little Polish Boy Standing With his Arms Up” Fischl uses repetition and symbolism to enhance, that one’s actions affect the lives of others, and at times those on the sidelines have a worsening effect after all.
The memoir,”Night”, shows the perspective of Elie Wiesel, a young boy that was sent to a concentration camp alongside hundreds of other Jews, that lost their valuables , faith and family.The terror within the concentration camp slowly deteriorate the Jews ,physically and mentally.The jews had a choice to be selfish or selfless,given the jews’ situation it is best to do what was in their best interest. Throughout Elie Wiesel’s memoir, “Night”; many individuals had a hard time navigating the brutality within the concentration camps.Through these times of brutality, many people in the camp had to choose to either be selfish or altruistic. Given the jew’s situation, it is better to act selfish than to be altruistic.
Vladek is depicted as a hero who shows countless acts of selflessness and generosity and a villain who is, “opinionated, tight-fisted, and self-involved”. (Brown 6) Art Spiegelman’s book Maus, tells the story of how Vladek and Anja Spiegelman survived the Holocaust. Spiegelman illustrates Vladek as a man who single-handily saved his family from starvation and Auschwitz in World War I. During Spiegelman’s interviews, we get an idea of Vladek’s darker side since the war ended. Mala to speak of her astonishment and disgust in Vladek’s character. Which leaves us to question how truthfully these stories are being told. In the end, Vladek’s unsuccessful heroism is a constant reminder of his failure; survival with Anja was always easier, after her death, Vladek pushes everyone away with his “guilt and manipulation” (Brown 7)
The concentration camps from World War II are part of a painful and tragic incident that we have learned about in school for many years. And while we are taught the facts, we may not fully understand the emotional impact it had upon the humans involved. Upon reading Night by Elie Wiesel, readers are given vivid descriptions of the gruesome and tragic behaviors that the Jews were forced to endure inside he treacherous concentration camps. Among all of the cruelties that the Jews were exposed to, a very significant form of the callous behaviors was the demoralization of the prisoners. Each inmate was given a tattoo of a number, and that tattoo became their new identity within the camp. Every prisoner was presented with tattered uniforms that became
As the war dwindled down, the Bilecki family lingered to their Polish home. Though they were rich in heart, the friction between the slips of tinted cash and the jangling of the metal coins were the only sound that seemed to be worth hearing. Sadly, for them there was a lack of it. The Jews that they saved acted as their guardian angel, as the Bilecki clan did for them. From all around the world, across the sea, the Jews kept them from malnutrition and naked chills. It wasn’t until 1998 that the secret of the Bilecki kindness was unveiled. Not only did they get the recognition they deserve, the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous had planned an infinitesimal surprise. Waiting, as the sounds of aircrafts roared, stood five of the survivors the Bilecki family had guided to asylum. The vulnerability of the raw moment was exposed as they shared their tears. The applause throbbed emphatically like the robust flapping of an angel’s wings. Their life saving feat did not go unacknowledged by the Righteous Among the Nations. Their unselfish deeds of valor and grace set themselves into being heroes.
The Holocaust, yet another unpleasant time in history tainted with the blood and suffering of man. Human beings tortured, executed and starved for hatred and radical ideas. Yet with many tragedies there are survivors, those who refused to die on another man’s command. These victims showed enormous willpower, they overcame human degradation and tragedies that not only pushed their beliefs in god, but their trust in fellow people. It was people like Elie Wiesel author of “Night”, Eva Galler,Sima Gleichgevicht-Wasser, and Solomon Radasky that survived, whose’ mental and physical capabilities were pushed to limits that are difficult to conceive. Each individual experiences were different, but their survival tales not so far-reaching to where the fundamental themes of fear, family, religion and self-preservation played a part in surviving. Although some of these themes weren’t always so useful for survival.
Ready Player One hits some of the same situations as in the holocaust or for the book that we read “Night” like taking people spread out over a good area and combining them into a small dense area. They both also touch on the topic of how when someone is killed or something is blown up now one raises an eyebrow or if they do no one does anything about it.
Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.
Over the past couple of week I have been reading the book Prisoner B-3087 which is a book about a Jewish boy named Yanek Gruener during WWII. Yanek was very young at the start of the war, around 10, and he lived in Poland his whole life in a flat apartment. He was growing up with Germans approaching him. His father always said that they would never reach them, but one day they did. The Nazis came marching in, took over the city and built a wall with gates so no one could leave. The let out all the non Jews and kept pushing more jewish families into the “Ghetto”. When the Ghetto started to fill up the Nazis would soon start killing people and taking them to the concentration camps. Yanek’s family soon started to be taken in trucks off to
In Night, Elie Wiesel descriptively shares his Holocaust experience in each part of his survival. From the ghettos to the Death March and liberation, Elie Wiesel imparts his story of sadness, suffering and struggle. Specifically Wiesel speaks about his short experience in the Sighet ghettos. Ghettos were implemented early on in the Holocaust for the purpose of segregating and concentrating the Jews before deportation to concentration camps and death camps. Depending on the region, ghettoization ranged from several days to multiple years before deportation. All Jews in ghettos across Europe would eventually face the same fate: annihilation (“Ghettos”). Wiesel’s accurate account of the Sighet ghettos illustrates the poor living conditions, the Judenrat and Jewish life in the ghetto as well as the design and purpose of the two Sighet ghettos. Wiesel’s description of the Sighet ghettos demonstrates the similar characteristics between the Sighet ghettos and other ghettos in Germany and in German-occupied territories in addition to the differences between the various ghettos.
When Irene Safran was only twenty-one years old, her carefree life ended in the face of the Holocaust. Born to two Jewish parents as one of ten children-- four girls and six boys in all-- in Munkachevo, Czechoslovakia around the year 1923, her world changed in early April 1944 when she and her family were transferred to a Jewish ghetto. For the next year, Irene's life was a series of deaths, losses, and humiliations no human should ever have to suffer, culminating, years later, with a triumphant ending. Her story is proof that the human spirit can triumph over all manner of adversity and evil.
“…Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same
The rise of Anti- Semitism was affecting the Jews all over Europe. Jewish towns and neighbourhoods were confined to ghettos starting in 1939. After living in ghettos for approximately 2 years and under unbearable conditions, German soldiers rounded up Jews and began to place them on trains. The experiences of Elie Wiesel and Irene Fogel Weiss are just two of the millions of stories that exist. Their experiences in the concentration camps have many similarities as well as many differences and not only has the Holocaust left physical scars but psychological scars too, which Viktor Frankel has written a book about, being a psychologist and a Holocaust survivor.
The Time is Night is a short novel by Liudmila Petrushevskaya. It is one of the few stories that I enjoy reading over and over again. The reason is that each time I re-read it, I perceive it in a slightly different way. The complicity of characters and the style of the novel is what I would like to emphasize most about the novel, as well as the fact that The Time is Night represents an outstanding social awareness of the author.