The Book of Blam
Aleksandar Tisma’s The Book of Blam highlights a brutal time in history in former Yugoslavia. This book is set in the city of Novi Sad and the majority of the book is focused on the raid that takes place when the Hungarians take over the defeated city, and collect Jewish members of the community in for execution. The main character in this novel is Miroslav Blam, and he recounts the images of brutality his fellow Jewish members of the community faced. The brutal and oppressive Hungarians are guilty for the forced deportation and execution of the Jewish Novi Sad community members, however the feeling of guilt is also placed on Blam as a result of the Bystander effect. Tisma also depicts the theme of judging throughout the novel, specifically through his portrayal of what Jewish characters are chosen to be deported. This novel portrays guilt in two distinct ways; guilt by oppressive action and guilt by watching oppressive action. By illustrating the Hungarians brutal and unjust treatment of the Jewish members in the Novi Sad community, Tisma clearly shows that the Hungarians are the primarily guilty for the injustice in Novi Sad. Tisma illustrates the atrocity of this historical period by describing what happened in a sampling of houses and neighborhoods. One explicit piece of evidence for the atrocity performed by the Hungarians is when a patrol of Hungarians comes to the home of Blam’s parents and takes them outside and shoots them with machine guns
“The War Against The Jews” by Lucy Dawidowicz explores a very dark time in history and interprets it from her view. Through the use of other novels, she concurs and agrees to form her opinion. This essay will explore who Dawidowicz is, why she wrote the book, what the book is about, what other authors have explored with the same topic, and how I feel about the topic she wrote about. All in all, much research will be presented throughout the essay. In the end you will see how strongly I feel about the topic I chose. I believe that although Hitler terrorized the Jews, they continued to be stronger than ever, and tried to keep up their society.
‘The Action in the Ghetto’ is a poem based on the perspective of a holocaust survivor. Kimel re-tells the horrors that he had survived during the holocaust. Kimel uses various literary techniques to create a visual for the audience to ‘see’ his experience. Kimel describes the visual of ‘the hunt’ as “the creation of hell.” He uses this metaphor to describe the soldiers and their true nature. Kimel then goes on describing the Nazi soldiers as “enjoying the hunt.” Kimel’s perception of the Nazi soldiers was that they found the hunt to be fun which provides insight into the
“After the War”, a book written by Carol Matas, is a captivating story about a group of Jewish people who illegally immigrate to Palestine. Throughout this story, we learn about the many struggles that the Jewish people had after WW2 ended. They had to find many ways to fight for their right to live. Some of these survival techniques include lying, stealing, and hiding.
Peter Longerich's Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews is a recent contribution to the contemporary scholarly literature on the subject. The book was originally published in 1998 in German, under the title Politik der Vernichtung, Politics of Destruction. This 2010 English-language release is, as the author claims, shorter in some areas and longer in others. The primary additions include a chapter on anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic, which adds considerable meat to the contextual evidence that Longerich includes in his history of the Holocaust. Moreover, the author draws on the release of new primary source data from the archives in Warsaw and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, which have only recently been revealed, archived, and cataloged.
There are symbols everywhere. A flag is just a piece of fabric to some, but to others it symbolizes freedom and patriotism. Some books, such as the Lord of the Flies show a vast amount of examples of what symbols are. This story, the Lord of the Flies, has a lot of symbols, such as the glasses or the conch. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding the conch shell symbolizes authority, which is derived from the structure and security within society.
The personal nature of the story is communicated through the author’s experiences and by the people of Gorazde themselves. Taking abandonment as an example, we follow Sacco as he travels down the “blue road” which Bosnian Muslims cannot escape their suffering, the very same road which the UN shares with Serbian ethnic cleansers. Here we have the international abandonment of the enclave. Relayed to us by the people of Gorazde, is their abandonment of one another based on ethnicity.
Man’s humanity is lost during the time of World War II. People victimize other people. Family fighting family, brother fighting brother in an act of mass genocide. Thoughts are beaten and drilled into their heads turning humans into mindless, fighting soldiers for an outlandish cause of “purifying” the population. During the Holocaust many books were written about the survivors. One book, Night by Elie Wiesel, exemplifies the inhumane acts of people against other people. Eliezer was a young boy when he was taken to a concentration camp, he worked and traveled from camp to camp. Treated like feral animals, the prisoners are worked to breaking points and have to endure raucous conditions. Many events in Night show how sick the people were to one another, more than enough to fit in this paper. A single essay cannot do justice for this memoir. The Jews in Night were treated so inhumanely throughout the course of the entire holocaust, but even though they were treated like sickly animals they treated each other just as bad.
Vladek went through the various Nazi genocide stages as brought out by Raul Hilberg. According to Hilberg, the four distinct phases of the Holocaust were identification, economic discrimination, and separation, concentration, and extermination. Although Vladek was not eventually exterminated, his close relatives and friends did not survive the lethal last stage through the various sugar-coated tactics employed by the Germans. The essay will scrutinize these Holocaust stages and relate them to the life events of the Vladek, the main character in Maus 1 and 2 written by Art Spiegelman. The works of other scholars in predicting the impacts of the Holocaust will also be looked at.
"It was crying and praying. So long we survived. And now we waited only that they shoot, because we had not else to do" (267). This quote from the end of the novel ironically describes what the Jewish people endured after the concentration camps. Vladek Spieglman among other suffered through traumatic experiences; though Vladek certainly did survive the holocaust, old Vladek did not. Post-Holocaust it is revealed by Spieglman that his father, Vladek, develops two personalities—before and after the concentration camps. Vladek’s post-holocaust life was haunted by the horrors he witnessed while being in the concentration camps; he went from a young, handsome resourceful man to a miserable, old man who does nothing but complain.
This summary paper on Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men will provide a summary and an overview of the main ideas of the text while attempting to focus on Browning's overall central argument which revolves around these seemingly “normal” and “ordinary men” and how they were transformed into murderers due to various elements. The summary paper will also be dedicated to the overall significance of the book and its significance in relation to the history of the Holocaust as a whole. Browning's novel is significant in generating a greater awareness towards the Holocaust but more specifically providing awareness towards who the perpetrators were as Browning provides an in depth examination into the ordinary men which were transformed into these mass murderers, while centering his argument on how and why did these normal and seemingly ordinary men transform into the mass murderers in which they became. The novel also takes the reader into an in depth, detailed account of the horrific actions of the German battalion towards the innocent Jewish population, as Browning details the
In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupy Hungary. Not long afterward, a series of increasingly repressive measures are passed, and the Jews of Eliezer’s town are forced into small ghettos within Sighet. Soon they are herded onto cattle cars, and a nightmarish journey ensues. After days and nights crammed into the car, exhausted and near starvation, the passengers arrive at Birkenau, the gateway to Auschwitz.
Despite Braham’s criticism of the Romanian history policy, he was optimistic about the future, which gave his book a problematic color of teleology. The book ended with the public denunciation of the fake Righteous, and with Braham’s optimistic prediction that the newly elected Romanian government was going to “take a resolute stand against the distortion of the Romanian chapter of the Holocaust.” The 2000s witnessed the false of this prediction, as Braham acknowledged himself in 2005 with his new book The Treatment of the Holocaust in Hungary and Romania during the Post-Communist Era. In Romania and beyond, nation states continued to appropriate memories on Jewish rescue for political purposes. On the other hand, the availability of resources
In 1939, Hitler was unsure of what he was going to do with the Jews; the Nazis were tossing around options and ideas with the goal of removing Jews from the population. The German invasion into Poland, allowed for the first ghetto, regarded as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews. Ghettos were enclosed, isolated urban areas designated for Jews. Living under strict regulations, with unthinkable living conditions, and crammed into small areas, the ghettos destroyed all hope of retaliating. In this paper, I will discuss what life would be like to be a Jew inside one of the 1,000 of ghettos within Poland and the Soviet Union. I will imagine myself a member of the Jewish council, describing the
While examining the works of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi it becomes apparent that the holocaust was a horrendous time in our human history. However, although both writers went through similar experiences during this time; both seem to reflect and dwell on things differently such as their point of view and lives in the camps as well as the different themes they focus on. In this analysis the stories of the two authors will be compared and as stated above will also focus on how they recount their experiences.
The Holocaust becomes the center of this. Whether it be at his Hebrew school, where Jewish history shaped not only the curriculum they learn. But, also as a collective identity shared by a new and contemporary Jewish generation. While still being connected to the past. This is a struggle for Mark, who does not even identify himself as Jewish for most of the story, He is continuously challenged with where to place himself in this new world, as a second-generation immigrant to Toronto. For Mark, being a young Latvian Jew is not easy.