Self Victimization In Bruno Bettelheim

The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many

Throughout the latter 1930s and early 1940s, many individuals experienced persecution. As Goldhagen mentioned in his novel, “Social death is a formal status...It is at once a culturally shared concept of the socially dead people and a set of practices towards them” (Goldhagen, 168). In Germany specifically, individuals part of a specific race were deemed to no longer be a human being in the eyes of the “superior race”. The social death of individuals such as Jewish people was obtained through the use of blame for problems faced and then the dehumanization of these individuals. Once the status of social death is reached, it is much easier for people to treat others in a degrading and violent manner. Those facing persecution, such as the Jewish, during World War II, faced immense atrocities. For individuals who were not killed themselves, the vast majority saw their friends and family killed, were stripped away from their homes and identity, were faced with torture, meager living conditions, and immense amounts of labor. On the opposite side, many individuals who took part in performing these atrocities against humanity were cognizant on some level to what they were doing, but were also obstructed

In Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 movie Schindler’s List, businessman and factory owner Oskar Schindler is concerned with both the welfare of his business as well as the workforce he employs of primarily Jewish people after witnessing their persecution by the German’s during the German’s occupation of Poland amid World War II. Themes pertaining to Social Psychology can be found in this film such as prejudice and discrimination, conformity, influence in social groups, aggression, cognitive dissonance, and altruism.

Oskar Schindler’s identity drastically changes from the beginning to the end of the movie. At first, Schindler was a greedy, selfish, and rich man, who was a member of the Nazi party and profited from the war. He also was a womanizer who constantly cheated on his wife. He only cared about making money and he only hired Jewish workers because they were cheaper. He saved his workers initially because he did not want to pay to train other workers and protected them since he believed that their welfare impacted his business. He saw Jewish people differently than other Germans, he saw them as workers, and he inadvertently developed a reputation for kindness. He did not do this at first to be a

Thus, it can be concluded that in the beginning of the movie Schindler does not fully grasp the tragedy at hand, and consequently does nothing attempt to aid the Jews. Schindler's realizations of the horrors of the holocaust begin in one scene near the middle of the film. During this infamous turning point of the movie, Schindler, on top of a barren hill, traces the path of a young and helpless Jewish girl who wanders haphazardly through the streets of a devastated camp. Her lone image personalizes the slaughter. Schindler tries to track her progress as she invisibly makes her way, aimless and alone, past the madness and chaos in the street - a woman is machine-gunned behind her. He loses sight of the small figure as she walks behind a building, but then he glimpses her again, walking by a file of Jews being herded down a sidewalk. During the roundup, a German soldier fires at a single-file lineup of men, killing five with one bullet. Distressed and stricken by the nightmare below and the plight of the little girl in red, Schindler sees her entering one of the empty apartment buildings. There, she climbs the stairs and crawls under a bed for cover in a ransacked room. Her safety is only temporary, for later she will be hunted down and cold-heartedly murdered, forgotten to the world, destroyed by her own people.

In the annals of history, the Holocaust registers as one of mankind’s most “unspeakable” offenses. And yet, over the past seventy years, survivors have strived nonetheless to transform torture into language—to verbalize the violence against man’s body and spirit that occurred at the hands of the Nazis.

The Holocaust can be seen as one of the most devastating genocide that occurred in history and that is well known in many places worldwide. One may assume that those who played a part in the acts done by the Nazis in Germany may have been mentally disturbed and/or sick, evil people. However, the novel Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning provides another alternative to this statement. Browning provides the reader with the idea that anyone is capable of becoming a murderer, especially when the opportunity presents itself. In his book he attempts to prove this statement through multiple ideas and theories and also provides events which took place to analyze some of those ideas.

One characteristics seen in victims is that they fear the person causing them agony. In Elie Wiesel's book, Night, Elie and his family are sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. There, one and a half million people are dying and are being beaten because of their religion or because they are not of the infallible Aryan race. To be considered a part

In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel depicts the steady escalation of dehumanization to which the Nazis subjected the Jews during the Holocaust and how it helped the Nazis crush the Jews’ spirits and justify their persecution and eventual genocide. Before the arrival of German soldiers, Wiesel and the other Jews of Sighet live in relative harmony with their Christian neighbors. But once the Nazis arrive, they steadily remove the Jews’ human rights until their fellow citizens no longer view them as human anymore. Thus, there is little action taken by the non-Jewish residents of Sighet when the persecutions and deportations begin. Additionally, the gradual pace of the dehumanization managed to convince the Jews that nothing significant was happening and that this was just a temporary phase that would soon pass. This could not be further from the truth. Once the Nazis finally issue the order to deport the Jews of Sighet, Wiesel notices that his neighbors’ spirits have been completely crushed: “There they went, defeated, their bundles, their lives in tow, having left behind their homes, their childhood. They passed me by, like beaten dogs, with never a glance in my direction. They must have envied me” (Wiesel 17). Wiesel describes his fellow Jews as downtrodden and defeated since they are now completely subject to the Nazi officers. The Nazis have stripped their rights, driven them from their homes, and treated them like animals. Being called and treated like animals, specifically

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you and your family were forced to move out of your home and leave everything behind. Well this is what happened to the Jews in the holocaust. One thing that the book Night by Elie Wiesel and the movie Schindler's List directed by Steven Spielberg is they both had some form of violence whether visual or descriptive. One major difference they had was how the main characters survived. Another key difference from both the movie and the book is the main character's motivation.

In the book Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning tackles the question of why German citizens engaged in nefarious behavior that led to the deaths of millions of Jewish and other minorities throughout Europe. The question of what drove Germans to commit acts of genocide has been investigated by numerous historians, but unfortunately, no overarching answer for the crimes has yet been decided upon. However, certain theories are more popular than others. Daniel Goldhagen in his book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, has expounded that the nature of the German culture before the Second World War was deeply embedded in anti-Semitic fervor, which in turn, acted as the catalyst for the events that would unfold into the Holocaust. It is at this

The Holocaust was the systematic and bureaucratic murder of six million Jews by the Nazi party and its collaborators. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities targeted many groups of people because of their perceived "racial inferiority" including Gypsies, the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples. Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds. Several authors have written about the Holocaust, but one author that touched many people the most was Elie Wiesel. Through the use of several style devices, Wiesel creates an impressionistic style which reflects the nature of his experiences in the Nazi

With all of the false stereotypes being relayed to the people, hate towards the Jews became normal. Kurt Mobius, a German police officer working at a concentration camp in Poland, said, “I believed the propaganda that all Jews were criminal and subhumans” (Marcovitz 18). The constant anti-Semitic distortion made it easy for

Primo Levi, in his novel Survival in Auschwitz (2008), illustrates the atrocities inflicted upon the prisoners of the concentration camp by the Schutzstaffel, through dehumanization. Levi describes “the denial of humanness” constantly forced upon the prisoners through similes, metaphors, and imagery of animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization (“Dehumanization”). He makes his readers aware of the cruel reality in the concentration camp in order to help them examine the psychological effects dehumanization has not only on those dehumanized, but also on those who dehumanize. He establishes an earnest and reflective tone with his audience yearning to grasp the reality of genocide.

Movies such as Schindler’s List which deal with the concepts of racism are an extremely important part of the film genres. Although many people know the racism issue occurs all over the world, few know the extremities it has and still goes on to. Learning about past racist occurrences such as the Holocaust is an important learning experience for all viewers of film because learning about something that happened in the past can better prevent that from happening in the future. Something as significant as the Holocaust should never be forgotten and the will to stop the world’s racism should never be lost. Elie Weisel, the survivor from the Holocaust stated about his struggle to end violence and hatred, “Indifference is never an option. It is not the beginning of a process; it is the end of a