The Importance Of Guilt And Survivors Of The Holocaust

     Throughout history the Jewish people have been scapegoats; whenever something was not going right they were the ones to blame. From Biblical times through to the Shakespearean Era, all the way to the Middle East Crisis and the creation of Israel, the Jews have been persecuted and blamed for the problems of the world. The most horrifying account of Jewish persecution is the holocaust, which took place in Europe from 1933 to 1945 when Adolf Hitler tried to eliminate all the people that he thought were inferior to the Germans, namely the Jews, because he wanted a pure Aryan State.

Fatal disasters are terrible by nature, and although the physical aftershocks are dreadful the emotional ones can be as well. The feeling of guilt that come to the survivors afterwards is known as survivor’s guilt, and it is a very painstaking mental process. Survivor's guilt is something largely disputed due to it's personal and terrible nature. Although it may seem like a horrendous thing for a person to endure it may be necessary for a person to heal and come terms with the tragedy they were involved in. Without guilt people involved in fatal tragedies would be less human, because it is human nature to go through grievances after tragedies even if they were not directly involved. Survivor’s guilt is the natural way of dealing with grief and the feeling of not having done enough to have prevented more loss or any at all. Some believe it is to cruel of a way to heal after all the person had been through, but they do not realize the development emotionally that occurs while haunted by the guilt. Survivor’s guilt was created by human nature to heal emotionally even after the physical event has occurred.

Oppressors have changed our world in a huge way from bullying to millions of deaths. 6 million Jewish people were victims of the holocaust during World War II. One person changed our whole world. Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi party and dictator of Germany. During this time Hitler removed the civil rights of the jews, and his goal in mind was for the expulsion of all Jews from Germany. Hitler caused millions of deaths because he decided to blame the jews for all of Germany’s problems, Hitler also thought of Jews as another inferior race, so inferior to the point that they really were not considered human. In result of this Hitler is the vital oppressor of the victims of the holocaust.

When many think of the Holocaust as a solely negative experience, and while it may seem easy to write the event off as a dark time in history that seems remote and unlikely to affect us today, there are some positive results, including the lessons that it brings for current and future humanity. The lessons that the Holocaust brings are applicable to every person in the world. While many of these lessons do focus on the negative aspects of the Holocaust, like what circumstances permit such a vast genocide and how many people can die because of widespread racial hatred, there are also those that focus on how some people, in all parts of Europe and throughout the world, retained their good human nature during the Holocaust. For example, what made some gentiles in Europe during that time willing and able to help Jews. Currently, Yad Vashem has recognized 26,513 rescuers throughout the world (Names), and the actual number of rescuers could likely be close to twice that amount (Baron,1). It is important that we analyze the reasons behind these rescuers’ choices to be upstanders instead of bystanders because we can learn about our own motivations when we face decisions between helping others and protecting ourselves, and possibly those we love, from harm. Fulfilling one’s self-interest was a potential motivation for helping Jews that will only be briefly addressed. This type of rescue potentially benefitted both the Jews and the Gentile rescuers; these Gentiles only helped Jews survive because they found personal gain, likely social or economic, in the action (Baron). However, in the situation that existed while rescuing the Jews, most efforts included the high possibility that both the rescuer and the rescued would end up worse off than they had begun with no potential for personal gain on either side. So those rescuers’ motivations are less easily explainable.

If one hates someone or something that means they have an intense dislike towards them. Sometimes this hate can be so large it can be an influence for mass destruction. We have learned, or even have seen examples of hate turning into something bigger throughout our history. These examples include the multiple wars, terrorist’s attacks, and genocides. Many of these incidents were drove by hate, and did not end well. What drives this hate? How can people turn on one another with just feeling hate towards them? The Holocaust being one of the many genocides in our history was indeed influenced by an intense dislike. That intense dislike was towards certain types of people it ended up taking multiple lives.

The Holocaust, a morbid atrocity that made people question humanity, was the cause of millions of deaths. One of those victims of this brutality was Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis along with her family. Although she was merely ordinary, Anne Frank kept a diary which became a significant, historical artifact in the modern world as it details her account of concealing her identity from the outside world. Her story, told in an innocent perspective, allows individuals to reflect the dreadful events of the Holocaust and acknowledge how far we have come since then. Even though she died along with millions of other victims from the Holocaust, her spirit still exists thanks to her articulately written words in her diary which is now considered one of the most famous works of literature. Anne Frank’s legacy still lives on today because her story provides a primary source of a dark period in history, insightful contemplation of humanity, and motivation for people to stand up against unjustified persecution.

As Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel once said, “To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice,” that is why we are called to remember. Many movies, novels, and story representations of the Holocaust have been created in order to spread the memory of the past. An important part of remembering is learning, and therefore not repeating the same mistakes once again. Movies may find it difficult to represent the Holocaust accurately, while also giving it meaning and artistic expression. The writer, Edwin de Vries, and the director, Jeroen Krabbé, strive to represent the legacies of the Holocaust and Jewish culture in the film, Left Luggage (1998), based on a novel by Carl Friedman through a portrayal of the daily lives of Holocaust survivors and their children in late 1960s Antwerp, their direct confrontations with their memories of the Holocaust, and character development. The film shows us many examples of the legacy of the Holocaust as it is passed through the children of survivors, and how it continues to affect their daily lives. The audience understands the intentions through depictions of muteness and the necessity to remember.

Hans Hubermann is a character in The Book Theif who experiences a large amount of survivor’s guilt. Hans fought in the Great War along with his friend Erik Vandenburg. On a day that everyone else was sent into battle, Hans was not, due to the fact that Erik nominated him to stay and write letters for their sargeant. He stayed while everyone else went off to fight. “None of them came back” (Zusak, 178). Hans escaped death while the others in battle were not as fortunate. It was because of Erik Vandenburg that Hans was still alive, and his feeling of guilt was overwhelming. Because of this, he went to see Erik’s family. “He saved my life… If there is anything you ever need…” (Zusak, 179). Hans knew that his offer was no comparison to Erik’s saving his life

During the reign of the Third Reich, the symbolization of the pink triangle was used to identify the thousands of gay prisoners who were sent to extermination camps under Paragraph 175, the law that criminalized homosexuality between men. Researchers say that an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 gay men died in these camps, however this figure does not include those who were interned and later released, let alone those who died undocumented and forever forgotten to history.¹ These thousands of men were forced through excruciating cruelties with little to no reprieve or recognition of the atrocities perpetrated against them. It is because of this that while they are not a distinct racial, ethnic, or religious group, the treatment of those who bore the pink triangle during the Holocaust follows the genocidal process and as such gay Holocaust victims should be considered sufferers of genocide.

The Holocaust was a tragedy. According to ushmm.org, “The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators”. This is a perfect explanation of the Holocaust seeing that so many innocent people were killed. If they weren’t they inevitably went through a great deal of pain whether it be from the abuse or watching all of their loved ones die. The Holocaust was intolerably devastating for many, tight quarters in all ghettos, and gruesome experiments on twins caused extreme pain for over 3,000 twins (thoughtco.com).

Guilt is the worst experience known to humans because it ties you up in knots and makes you feel unworthy and miserable. For instance, when Sal’s mother was eight months pregnant, Sal fell from the branches of a tree. She broke her leg and fell unconscious. Sal's mother found her, carried her home, and rushed her to the hospital to be fitted in a cast. At home later that night, Sal's mother went into a difficult labor. The doctor arrived too late, the umbilical cord had strangled the baby, and Sal's mother was hemorrhaging badly. The baby was born dead her father tells Sal that she shouldn’t blame herself on the baby’s death. From the book “And then I started thinking about my mother's stillborn baby and maybe if I hadn't climbed that tree and if my mother hadn't carried me, maybe the baby would have lived and my mother never would have gone away, and everything would still be as it used to be”(Creech 257) here Sal is blaming her self for her mother abandonment.

It’s about the jews and how and what happened to them after the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the time where about six million jews and one million other people dying. Most people were killed because they belonged to different races and religions. The Nazis wanted to kill people that weren’t from their same religious group. The Nazis also killed people who disrespected Hitler. Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party.

The word Holocaust means a sacrificial offering that is completely burned. The Holocaust was a state-sponsored time when Jews were murdered in a genocide by the Nazis and its leader, Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany at the time, during World War II. Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I and other German problems. This included the lack of jobs, financial problems, etc.. The Germans believed that their race was more superior compared to the Jews. The Holocaust also killed many priests, disabled people, homosextuals, political opponents, and Communists.

What did America do during the time period in which the Holocaust was happening? To start, the Holocaust was the genocide that killed six million Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany. America did not do much to help at this time. The US did things like making immigration laws way more difficult than it needed to be. They also turned away the St. Louis that boarded almost a thousand Jewish people and when given the chance to help, they chose not to. The United States during World War II did not consider saving the people being killed by Nazi Germany a prime concern.

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