Werner Klemke And Ernie Feld: A Literary Analysis

The article ‘Teens against Hitler ', by Lauren Tarshis, Describes the hardships and courageous acts of Ben Kamm, a Jewish ‘Partisan’ or fighter against Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust, and all Jews who faced the challenges during that tragic time. The Jewish only wanted a normal life, but German leader, Adolf Hitler, wanted to make sure all Jew would perish. So, they began piling Jews into concentration camps to kill them, Hitler would work them to death, starve them, and even murder them in gas chambers. Then, The ‘Partisans’ began to fight against Hitler and his army. This act of courage, despite the challenges and risks they faced, help many Jews survive the most horrific event in history, The Holocaust.

We live in a world of over seven billion people, how can one person even make a dent? It may not always be the action itself, but the impact that it has on a person. Never forget, never again, the words that resound in one’s head when thinking of Elie Wiesel's speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. We can never forget the stories of the lost, gone, and the survivors, so that we do not repeat their mistakes. Elie Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust, World War II, and life’s brutalities. In his lifetime Elie Wiesel experienced discrimination because he was Jewish. He was sent to labor camps because he practiced a different religion. However, many people of the world today are discriminated against because they act or look a little different. The

We need to prevent history from repeating itself, and the stories of survivors help us to do so. For example, Iby Knill is an Auschwitz survivor and “a tireless speaker for schools, community groups and other organisations, telling her story as a warning of the dangers of discrimination and persecution” (“Iby Knill…”). By sharing their stories, Holocaust survivors bring awareness to the causes and effects of genocide. This awareness allows us to keep people like Adolf Hitler from rising to power today.

The holocaust took its toll on the lives of innumerable people. One particular survivor Elie Wiesel had his entire outlook on life changed not to mention his beliefs feeling and his innocence. His life was once a pleasant and comfort filled life, one with family and friends. A life worth living and a life that was filled with innocence and freedom of religion. He loved his religion as if it was life itself. He wanted to push himself to be more close to God but, that would soon change. As a result during Elie’s experience during the holocaust he changed from a religious, sensitive little boy to a spiritually dead , unemotional man.

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.

Imagine being in a highly populated concentrated area with many people fighting to just get by each day. Would you try to help others for the sacrifice of your mental or physical health? Would you give up your food so that you can give it to someone who is in worse condition than you? Night shows Elie Wiesel’s experiences with the concentration camp called Auschwitz. Even if people would say that they would help others for sacrificing your health there is always a breaking point. If people think that life will be better in some sort of way in the long run, that is sometimes not true and if that is true as hopeful as they are that could be threatening to their lives. This mental and physical suffering that these people of Auschwitz endure could cause them to become senseless to tasks that would be unethical or immoral to them.

The Holocaust is known as one of the most devastating, or perhaps even the most devastating incident in human history. On paper, the dizzying statistics are hard to believe. The mass executions, the terrible conditions, the ruthlessness, and the passivity of the majority of witnesses to the traumatic events all seem like a giant, twisted story blown out of proportion to scare children. But the stories are true, the terror really happened, and ordinary citizens were convinced into doing savage deeds against innocent people. How, one must ask? How could anyone be so pitiless towards their neighbors, their friends? In a time of desperation, when a country was on its knees to the rest of the world, one man not only united Germans against a

Since the start of the Nazi occupation in Europe, Jewish communities and individuals were struggling with survival, and fought for their existence. Many Jews tried to evade or overcome the degrading Nazi decrees, that stripped them of civil and human rights, triggered isolation and denied them a livelihood. The Nazis simply wanted to create a condition in which no human being, particularly Jewish, can live or even exist. For a long time, the Jews’ view on the sanctity of life, a duty to protect one’s life, encouraged them to endure the period of intense pain and suffering. From past experience, the Jews thought that the terrible events of the Nazis would pass, the same as the pogroms. Over a period of centuries, from the Crusades to the

A quote from Albert Einstein states “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”. As difficult as it is to describe the terrible deeds of those who were part of the Holocaust, it is true that those who did nothing are at fault just as much as those who carried out the actions. When one thinks of the Holocaust today it is difficult to picture that such events were done by human beings. Societies have advanced but it is important to acknowledge the reason as to why many bystanders refused to help or why they were so indifferent to the pain felt by the Jews. “The psychological mechanisms used to come to terms with the suffering of another appear to be very similar, whether the person is standing right before us or is 2,000 miles away. (Barnet:118) Barnett explains that ideological and moral principles also come into play, as do self-interest and the weighing of the possible consequences of our actions. We try to establish what is or is not possible. In the end, our decision will be determined not so much by whether we actually have the power to change a situation, but whether we have the will to do so. (Barnett, 118). In the case of many of the individuals who chose to become bystanders rather than change the situation they were not willing to get involved. Although not every German was a bystander, those who

Many people believed that the Jews would never survive the concentration camps. However, the Jews managed to stay alive physically and spiritually by working with all the strength they could muster, making the best with the rations they were given, believing in family’s promises, and having faith that they would be free once again. Therefore, people should always stay strong even when it seems like all hope is lost.

A common misconception about the Holocaust is that the world was naïve of the atrocities happening under the Nazi’s rule. The horrors of the Holocaust were not left undocumented. Unfortunately, many saw these malicious acts as insignificant to the global population; people only start sympathizing when the hindrance affects them. Hitler, with the help of his many allies, achieved to murder millions of innocent men, women, and children. After spending this semester studying the Holocaust, I have realized that the Nazis’ greatest ally was neither an individual nor a country; Hitler’s greatest ally was indifference.

My goal with my research is to look into the resistance of both the Jewish people and the others in European society who assisted in Jewish escapes. The perceived image of the Jews during the Holocaust is of “lambs to the slaughter.” The pictured painted of the rest of European society is one of either knowing accomplices or silent spectators. The Jewish people had many forms of resistance, some small and some large. While many of their neighbors were silent spectators, but many people were actively resisting the tyrannical Nazi government by assisting Jewish escapes. Each of these individuals risked their lives and the lives of their families and friends to aid these hunted individuals. They all deserve to have their stories heard and honored. In a time of complete chaos and destruction many people would not have the ability or fortitude to save the life of another person. The people that I will discuss in this paper were not only able to take that step, but put themselves and their families in real and eminent danger for the life, at times, of a complete stranger.

“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing” -Simon Wiesenthal (Simon Wiesenthal Quote). During the Holocaust, an estimated eleven million people died agonizing deaths from methods such as gas chambers, scientific experiments, beatings, and malnutrition (Concentration Camps 1933-1939). This staggering number is almost as much as the current population of the state of Ohio (United States). The big question is, why did the

Although the Holocaust was a horrific event that caused thousands upon thousands of people to lose faith in their God, some people were able to come out of the holocaust stronger and with more faith in God. Some people thought of it as their God testing them to see how faithful they really are, while others thought of it as a draining situation. Most of the victims had the mindset that a God they had devoted so much of their lives to would not put something like this in their life, which in turn caused them to lose their faith in their God. Some people have to ability to pull positive things out of any situation, no matter how bad it may be, and that is what was really important during the Holocaust. ”We who lived, in concentration camps can