We Are Witnesses Literary Analysis

Everyone has heard of the holocaust and learned about it in history class, but there is no way that anyone could even imagine how terrible it was unless they experienced it themselves. After reading, “The Boy on the Wooden Box”, by Leon Leyson, it is clear that the author’s tone throughout the story is one of pain and agony. The story Leon tells is about his family’s journey during the holocaust, and all the physical and emotional pain that they went through, but also how lucky they were to have survived.

Chartock, Roselle, Jack Spencer. The Holocaust Years: Society on Trial. New York: Bantam Books, 1978.

Throughout the years curiosity regarding the holocaust has become more evident in the 21st century as people across the globe anxiously learn about the events that took place in Germany during World War II. The importance of this event is not only being taught to Americans and people of the Jewish religion, but it is also being taught in other parts of the world. The popularity of knowledge being obtained regarding the holocaust grows: books, documentaries, and poems. Poems, like that of William Heyen’s “The Trains”, are being introduced to the generations in the 21st century. Heyen pinpoints the curiosity of his audience to make them want to learn about the holocaust

During the Holocaust, the Nazis did not stop at simply asserting their own superiority over the Jews; they stripped them of their sense of self and individuality and reduced them to the numbers they had tattooed on their arms. The theme of inhumanity is common in every story and every memory recounted in the memoir. Night makes you question the power of humanity. It makes you wonder how ordinary human beings could bring themselves to commit the kind of horror that we now deem unthinkable. But then again, people say that the most human thing of all is cruelty. And every family destroyed, every instance of torture and every life lost is

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.

“It is necessary to resist the tendency of recent Holocaust scholarships to universalize or collectivize Holocaust testimony, and instead revive the particular by uncovering the multiple layers within testimony.” (1) Zoe Waxman’s 2006 monograph Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation sets out to prove that while the Holocaust has been universalized as one event, historians must explore the social and historical context of the many individual narratives of Holocaust witnesses in order to understand the diversity of experiences. Waxman states “three theses emerge during the course of the present study” (1) and sets out to demonstrate that Holocaust testimonies are historical, to prove that the testimony is mediated by its own history, and that testimonies confirm to the heterogeneity of Holocaust experiences.

The author, Elie Wiesel, had the purpose of giving his speech to try to keep the memory of the crimes were committed during the Holocaust. In Elie’s speech he exclaims that, “I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night. I remember his bewilderment. I remember his anguish.” (Wiesel). The following part of his speech shows the audience the impact that the Holocaust had on him, how the little boy image has stayed with him all after all these years. In his speech, Elie, remembers the little boy asking his father,

After reading two excerpts and a poem about children experiencing life during the Holocaust All the children had very different and similar experiences.The two excerpts are named “Until Then I Had Only Read about These Things in Books..” and Milkweed.The poem is named “The Guard”.

“A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load - little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it with my own eyes… those children in the flames.” (Elie Wiesel, 24) This memoir, told by Elie Wiesel in his book “Night” and published in 1956, describes his experiences surviving the Holocaust. He and his father are forced to endure extremely traumatic experiences. Throughout “Night”, there are moments that are incredibly powerful. These moments are powerful because it really shows how horrible the Holocaust was, and the terrors not only Elie went through, but that almost all Jewish people experienced.

Part III of Niewyk’s book is about the victim’s experiences in the camps. Four articles are presented. The first is by Bruno Bettelheim, a child psychologist and survivor of the Holocaust, who concludes via Freudian psychology that victims in the camps reverted to childlike behavior due to their circumstances. The second is by Terrence Des Pres, a literature professor, who refutes Bettelheim’s position by adding additional information Bettelheim did not include. Next is Primo Levi, another survivor, who details a “moral grey zone” of actions taken while in the camps. Last in the chapter is Zoe Vania Waxman, who focuses on women’s experiences in the Holocaust and how their actions did not always fit in the gender stereotype that women are always

The holocaust was an event that undoubtedly left a mark on millions of people’s lives. But among those people, those most affected were the survivors who, by chance, could walk away from Auschwitz with their lives. Upon reflection of the tragedies we now know occurred within the Jewish internment camps, one can only imagine the scarring effects that must have been left on the survivors. Through three texts I was able to identify a conversation of just how deteriorating the Jewish internment camps were to those who managed to live through them.

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

The Holocaust can be described by facts, pictures, history lessons, among others, that can make a strong and lasting impression on an individual. However, testimonies are when the true horrors of this event become real. Testimonies are personal. Their authentic emotions, thoughts, and feelings are wrapped up in a little box with a red bow and given to the public as a fragile gift. Survivor Manya Friedman wrote, “I had little confidence when I started. My hands were so shaky I could barely read my own writing. As I started writing, I was given confidence, support, and encouragement. If I can do this, then you can too” (“The Transition”). Due to her strength and many others, individuals who weren’t affected by the holocaust are fortunate to be provided with such thoughtful insight about how the lives of these Jewish individuals were affected and remain affected. Even so, their experiences are something we will never be able to fathom.

“They undress you. They give you new clothes. They shave you. They divided you. My parents, my sisters, my brothers — they go to the gas chambers,” he said. Riteman was spared because he was selected for hard labor. But he lost his entire family: his five brothers, two sisters, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. This is the true story of The Holocaust was the systematic murder of over 6,000,000 Jews. Adolf Hitler, Germany’s leader at the time, was the reason why all these innocent people were murdered, he and ultimately committed suicide on April 30th, 1945. However, his evil spirit still lies, with all those people that still live to tell the tale of the atrocities they experienced, beyond words, in his concentration camps. The way one can speak the unspeakable horrors of their experiences in the Holocaust is through repetition, symbolism, and imagery.

The Holocaust is a very large topic with many subtopics within, which many people have never heard of. One in particular is the Hidden Children of the Holocaust. Like a majority of individuals, I never heard of this topic before, until I started my inquiry work. Hiding children during the holocaust was an effort to save thousands of children’s lives. The children were hidden in different ways, either with false identities, underground, and with or without their parents. The children with false identities were allowed to participate in everyday life activities, like attend school and socialize with children their age, which in the long run this lead to less emotional and mental issues. However, the children that were hidden and not allowed to leave their hiding spots often faced boredom, pain, and torment. Some children were capable of being hid with their parents while other children were not. Depending on the situation the child was in, depends on the effects it had on the child during this time. In this paper, I will be discussing works by two scholars, Natalia Aleksiun’s Gender and Daily Lives of Jews in Hiding in Eastern Galicia and Judy Mitchell’s Children of the Holocaust. Aleksiun’s article talks about the daily lives of Jews in hiding and also about how they prepared their hideouts. Aleksiun’s article mainly focuses on children that were hidden with their families. In Mitchell’s article, he focuses on the hidden children and gives examples/survivor stories on what it