The Holocaust: An Act Of Genocide

As Stephen Ambrose, American historian and biographer, once said, “The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.” As Stephen Ambrose observed, the Holocaust is recognized as a time in which the worst possible crime of all was committed. Millions of people died, and not many people tried to do anything to stop it.

Ian Kershaw empathetically states that “The Holocaust was the systematic, extermination of six million Jews by the Nazi government and their allies during World War II.” He further add that it wasn’t until after Adolph Hitler “became Chancellor of the German government, he began targeting the Jews as racially inferior to the German people (Kershaw, 1985).

Dehumanization the process of stripping people of their human qualities. In the novel night by Elie Wiesel the author uses many dehumanization scenarios to show what the jews experienced during the holocaust. They were stripped of their clothing and number like cattle for that fear was more important than food. The ss went though all of this for the exterminating the jews race.

The Holocaust was a mass murder of millions of individuals’ primary to and during World War II. “Only 54 percent of the people surveyed by the Anti- Defamation League (ADL) in a massive, global poll has ever heard of the Holocaust” (Wiener-Bronner). The Holocaust was from 1933-1945 and was run by German leader named Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a man who wanted to create his own race of people. Therefore to create this race, he wiped out anyone who did not have the specific descriptions that he wanted. For people to fit into his race, they had to have blue eyes and blond hair. This excluded the Jews and from then on Hitler slowly dehumanized them. In the concentration camp the first thing they had to pass was the selection test. The selection test was what the SS man (German soldiers) used to determine who was fit for work. Usually children, mothers, and elders were the first to die because they were not mentally fit for the work they were going to be given. People who passed the selection process either died of starvation, disease, fatigue, or assassination. It took twelve years before anyone intervened and by then it was too late for millions of people. Even though over twelve million people died during the Holocaust, genocides have still happened in Rwanda, Darfur and Cambodia.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a witty and well-written account of the realities of a “tired old town” (4) where there was “nothing to buy and nothing to buy it with” (4). Purposefully, it comes across not merely an innocently portrayed, yet eye-opening, story of a young girl start to grasp the inequalities of her society. Rather, it is accompanied by recollection of the unfortunate pillars of hate of the places Harper Lee matured in. We now perceive this account as an ‘archaic” and “ancient” recount of some historically frowned upon mindsets in an enthralling atmosphere upon which we pin historical quantities of prejudice, racism and most of all, bigotry. The unfortunate reality is that we look at history in a vacuum and ignore the occurrences of our own times. So although we, like Scout’s teachers teaching about the horrible acts of the Holocaust while being outspokenly racist, are able to analyze social inequalities in other places in time or the world yet refuse to open our eyes to the same prejudice, racism and bigotry today. To instance, when reading To Kill a Mockingbird , we often frown upon citizens for judging “folks” based on their family name and race, although, everyday, some member of our current society, such as police officers and employers, do the same thing and no one bats an eye. Alternatively, the issue which we definitely desperately desire to avoid, racism, is explicitly tackled in To Kill a Mockingbird to the point of viral awareness of the problem in

Genocide is the destruction of an ethnic, racial, or religious group. The most famous genocide, conducted by the Germans, is the extermination of the Jewish population known as the Holocaust. There are other genocides such as the Armenian or Darfur genocide, but the Holocaust is the one talked about and studied the most around the world today. Museums exist in Washington D.C, Los Angeles, and parts of Europe that focus primarily on this dark time in history. Vast amounts of books, movies, and documents concentrate on the Holocaust. Why is this chapter, between 1939 and 1945, discussed and examined? The answer lies within people who experienced the Holocaust such as Elie Wiesel, Jay Frankston, and Franks Shatz. These men have gone through hell and back, but they believe in one thing. That is, the notion of never again. The goal is to educate future generations on what really happened, so history does not repeat itself. Never again should people of any race, religion, or ethnicity, go through the horrific past of the Holocaust. In their writing, Wiesel, Frankston, and Shatz do a great job using pathos, logos, and ethos to convey their message of never again for future generations.

Dehumanization is understood as the process of humans being deprived of what makes them human, but the Nazis took it a step further to encourage mistreatment between the prisoners . The Holocaust is a ghastly event in the history of the world, that killed around 6 million Jewish people, but the horrors don’t stop there. The way the prisoners were treated in the concentration camps left lasting effects on the survivors. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he recounts the horrific actions of the Nazi party against the Jewish people . The lasting effects of dehumanization do not take long to show, and the effects are only worsened through the numerous reminders from the Nazis that they aren’t worth anything.

Dehumanization is the deprivation of human qualities which Hitler and his followers use to achieve “The Final Solution.” Throughout the memoir, Elie Wiesel scatters moments of dehumanization that the Jews went through. Wiesel emphasizes, “Humanity would never tolerate it [burning people]” (30). Burning people alive is a corrupt thing to do. The Nazis took the Jews’ lives without their permission and had no

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.

Dehumanization is a concept that basically means that you’ve become so traumatized that your personality completely changes and you are a different person from before, because of the events that you have gone through, The holocaust was a war during World War II, when hitler opened up concentration camps and forced Jews to go, only to be murdered soon after. The reason we are talking about dehumanization, is because the Elie Wiesel went through this during the Holocaust, he lost his father, mother, and close friends to this event. It put him through a mindset that change his look on life and changed his thought on his own religion. Believing that his God may not be there all along.

Dehumanization is defined as “the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities.” As Elie Wiesel describes throughout Night, the holocaust deprived him of all human qualities. After Wiesel’s experiences, he viewed his reflection as a corpse (pg 119); every human aspect of himself was taken away during his time at Auschwitz. At this camp, he and many others were treated as if they were tools for labor, not living beings. As twelve year-old Wiesel begins his journey to Auschwitz, he says that he, along with seventy nine other Jews, were forced into cattle cars.

The memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, depicts many inhuman acts towards the Jews during the Holocaust. One main legacy of the memoir Night is the sheer scale of genocide of one group of people towards another group, in this case, it is the German’s attempt to annihilate the Jewish population. These concentration camps work day and night trying to accomplish Hitler’s zealeos intent to wipe out the entire European Jewish population by manipulating many execution and punishments methods varying from gas chambers to crematoriums. Through showing the diabolical behaviors of the Germans towards the Jews, the theme of inhumanity is assimilated into the memoir Night in order to accentuate on how dark the holocaust was while creating affinity of

“The holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed”- Stephen Ambrose. In this book Elie Wiesel and his family gets taken by SS officers. When they get to the first camp him and his father get separated from his mom and his sisters. Then towards the end Elie's dad dies and elie makes it out of the holocaust. In Elie Wiesel's book “Night”, the German army dehumanizes Elie Wiesel and the Jewish prisoners by depriving them of physiological, safety/ security, and love/ affection.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, up to 6 million Jews died. To the anti-semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, and an alien threat to the German community. Some people believe that the Holocaust was not an act of genocide, but they're wrong. The Holocaust should be considered an example of genocide based on the United Nation’s definition, the stages of genocide, and the specific evidence provided in the memoir Night.

Genocide is the carefully planned and the deliberate killing of a significantly large group of people. Mostly and especially those who are part of a particular culture, race or religion. Genocide is not something that just eradicates the targeted people, but they continue to draw out the punishments and the abuse that is far more exceeded then what is needed to kill the targeted people. One of the history's most notorious genocides would be the Holocaust which killed over 6 million Jews. The Holocaust was located in Germany and involved an extremists German group called the Nazi’s who slaughtered the Jewish community and many other ethnic groups.