The Fiftieth Gate And Cathy Wilcox 's Cartoon

To expand on the intricacy of the speaker’s life, symbolism is applied to showcase the oppression her ancestors etched on her quilt were facing for their “burnt umber pride” and “ochre gentleness” (39-40). Once again, the theme of absence is introduced as there is a sense of separation among the Native American culture as their innocent souls are forced onto reservations and taken away from their families. This prolonged cruelty and unjust treatment can be advocated when the speaker explains how her Meema “must have dreamed about Mama when the dancing was over: a lanky girl trailing after her father through his Oklahoma

As said by Audrey Hepburn; “Living is like tearing through a museum, not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can’t take it in all at once.” In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the Holocaust took place in an order of layers. As time passed, the extremity was increased each chapter he succumbed to. Elie expresses raw emotion in his memoir, Night, and leaves you in a complete, utter state of wonder and sadness. Not only this, but remembering and cherishing the importance of all the emotions from this time in history. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the theme of remembering is present before the Holocaust and in today’s society.

Baker’s memoir portrays the value of memory in humanising the objectiveness of historical truth and its role in developing an individual’s ability to understand how past events shape their cultural identity. Throughout The Fiftieth Gate, Baker’s position as a historian colours his perspective in understanding the past events of the Holocaust; in his use of polyphonous voices, the multiple voices are able to provide insight into different perspectives and their memories. He finds that his parents’ memories are valuable in deepening his understanding of the past and his Jewish culture, as

The two poems “Never Shall I Forget” and “We Remember Them”, written by Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Sylvan Kamens, have their fair share of similarities and differences. These poems are both highly influenced by the Holocaust, the genocide of over 11 million people, 6 million of them being Jews, during World War II. In “Never Shall I Forget”, Elie Wiesel talks of his sufferings in a concentration camp and “We Remember Them” pass on the memory of those who died during the Holocaust. “Never Shall I Forget” and “We Remember Them” both have a shared theme of remembrance, but Elie Wiesel wrote of what he would rather forget than remember, whereas Rabbi Sylvan Kamens wrote of what he wishes to never forget.

The resistance of the Holocaust has claimed worldwide fame at a certain point in history, but the evidence that the evil-doers themselves left crush everything that verifies the fantasy of the Holocaust. For an example, in Poland, the total Jewish population of over thirty-three hundred thousand suddenly plummeted to three hundred thousand. Ten percent of the population survived the Holocaust in Poland. Almost every country that the Nazis have conquered has the same percent of survival as Poland. In Elie Wiesel Wiesel’s memoir Night, the activities in the concentration camps, the suffering of Jews, and the disbelief of the inhumane actions of the Nazis result in making people resist the truth.

The purpose of a story is not solely just to share lessons and truths about human nature but to also share stories of the past. Recognizing history and the knowledge acquired through stories is crucial in growing as an individual and as an entire society. People may be inclined to forget awful wars or events of the past. However, the act of forgetting these stories is an effort to avoid confronting the terrors and mistakes of the past. For instance, in Night, Elie Wiesel’s purpose in writing his memoir on his experiences of the Holocaust and in the death

Literature helps us remember the past and honor the victims of the Holocaust in many contrasting ways. “The Grand Mosque of Paris”, an explanatory text by Karen Ruelle, “A Great Adventure in the Shadow of a War” , a reflective essay by Mary Helen Dirkx, “ The Diary of a Young Girl”, a diary excerpt by Anne Frank, “The Diary of Anne Frank”, an autobiography by Anne Frank, the “Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Peace Prize”, a speech by Elie Wiesel, and “Maus”, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman all present the past in different ways to help us honor the victims of the Holocaust.

In public discourse surrounding an event like the Holocaust, it is not uncommon for one to want to summarize the event in some abstract concept, be it positive or negative. This type of thinking is especially prevalent in the conclusions drawn by those reading literary works relating to the Holocaust, in which the stories are so entrenched with stereotypes of suffering and the equivocal life-lessons that they lead to a rather shallow understanding of an emotive and difficult subject. This is not to say that drawing these types of conclusions is wrong or especially invalid, but rather the process of projecting these lessons onto the story without developing their further implications speaks to a superficial longing of externalizing the

Reading historical sources is an important and fundamental way of learning from history because it provides different perspectives of a particular event. If historians and scholars were to draw from one particular source, then they would have a limited perspective of an event that occurred. Therefore, this is why many different sources need to be integrated into learning about a particular subject. While learning about the Holocaust, my Professor, Gordon Dueck, has used Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, Laurent Binet’s novel, HHhH, and Norman Goda’s historical overview, The Holocaust: Europe, the World, and the Jews, 1918 – 1945, to teach us about the Holocaust. This paper will discuss the different forms of Holocaust representation that I have learned about and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of memoirs, novels, and historical overviews while learning about the Holocaust.

This criticism of writing about the Holocaust emerges in the concept of truth and whose accounts of the Holocaust are fact, and if the reader chooses to believe what is written. Often times in the classroom especially, historically encompassing documents of the Holocaust are viewed as more valid resources than a creative piece. Kenneth Mischel argues,

The topic of the Holocaust is a broad and gruesome one; maybe it is because of the horrors that happened that people still write about it, to try to understand what happened, and how it did. Regardless, Elie Wiesel explains why he, as a Holocaust survivor, writes within his essay “Why I Write: Making No Become Yes”. He writes that perhaps it is “…in order not to go mad.” or “to touch the bottom of madness.” These two possible reasons are quite different from each other, yet they share a similar topic, this is similarly true about Elie Wiesel’s essay and Harry Weinberg’s short story “A Letter to Harvey Milk” The similarities and differences in these two works shows the varying ways people cope with similar past experience, the impact those memories can have on their lives, and the effect sharing those experiences can have on them.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, says Spanish philosopher George Satayana. Remembering the past is important, as it affects all present and future outcomes. The first step to remembering the past is acknowledging the facts and what is true. This is seen in the graphic memoir, Maus and Maus II, written by Art Spiegelman. In this book, Spiegelman writes using his and father’s dialogue, in which his father, Vladek, recounts his experiences of the Holocaust. With the importance of these events in mind, in order to accurately depict these experiences Spiegelman tries his best to gather any documentations, such as his mother’s diaries, sketches and diagrams of the camps back then, and a real life photo of Vladek to

Books, films, documentaries, and even memories: each serves to recount past events, each in a different way. While these accounts of the past are shared, they serve to provide the audience with an understanding; oftentimes this understanding does not and cannot portray the effect of certain, unimaginable events in history, such as the Holocaust, on individuals. In his essay, “The Presence of the Past,” Bernhard Schlink brings to the surface some of the inherited struggles that generations of German people have faced as a result of the Third Reich. Alongside his essay, Schlink also presents the effect of the past on people in his novel, The Reader, when he presents the audience with a character placed in a situation that is highly uncommon.

The fleeting temporal gates – whence a memory enters and leaves, as it transcends the defining words of a dead time – yield to the winds inside one mind; therefore, this brain exaggerates the injurious envious deeds and sentiments which underlie an innocuous or neutral behaviour; thus, transforming the benevolent movement into malevolent intentions that harass and confound sensibility to the present events and coincidences. Meanwhile, the writer suspects that his extra choleric blood flows from subconscious grades; auto-correction replaces guilt as the snake hisses underneath the truth-conscious phrases that chide the circumvented or implicated people.

Marianne Hirsch, a second-generation survivor of the holocaust reconnects to memory of the holocaust when she involuntarily watches a film about the holocaust. Hirsch talks about her reaction when she had to see the Film. She never wanted to see any film referring to the holocaust trauma because of the deeply emotional effects and the wounds she still carried within herself. However, when she saw the film, Hirsch was eager to explore how the second generation connects or copes with the trauma. Hirsch, gives the first meaning of the term in 1992, in her article ‘’Family Pictures: Mause, Mourning and Post- Memory’’. In several of her writings, she elaborates on the term mainly in relation with the holocaust experience.