Werner Klemke And Ernie Feld: A Literary Analysis

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

In the world during the time of the Holocaust, there was indifference towards the suffering of millions of Jews. When individuals reflect about the Holocaust, the majority of the time the responsibility of the terrible events is placed upon the perpetrators. However, bystanders and witnesses indirectly affected the victims of the Holocaust as well. The silence of these people played one of the largest roles in the Holocaust, they influenced it by avoiding any type of involvement and by becoming blinded towards the suffering of others. In his Academy Award acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel says, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”. This exert from his speech reveals the importance of the role that bystanders played in the

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.

Forty-two years after entering the concentration camp for the first time, Elie Wiesel remarked, “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope” (Nobel Lecture 1). This means a lot from someone who endured almost two years of the terror in the WWII concentration camps. During these two years, Elie endured the sadness of leaving his former life and faith behind, the pain of living off of scraps of bread, and the trepidation of the “selections”, where he almost lost his father. He watched the hanging of innocent people, was beat by Kapos and guards time after time, and marched in a death march right after having a foot surgery. Through all of this, he survived because he remained hopeful. Hope was all the Jewish people

During World War II, a Czechoslovakian Jewish girl named Edith Singer was able to survive the holocaust by her faith. Not only was she able to keep herself a live, but she also was able to push, and help other’s to survive. Edith does not lose her faith in God, and is able to transfer her faith into other’s that she cares for. Her faith also leads her to keep her mental health during the horrible times she and other Jewish people went through. The Nazi soldier’s did not give the Jewish people any type of mercy which made the holocaust even more horrific than anyone can imagine.

Although the world continues to face tragedy, little compares to that of the horrors millions of innocent Jews like Elie Wiesel faced, as they were deported from their homes, separated from their families and pushed around into different concentration camps where they were brutally tortured, killed, and discarded of by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany Army beginning in 1941. It wasn’t until April of 1945 that Elie along with the limited number of other survivors were finally liberated. This mid 20th century atrocity has come to be known as the Holocaust, a tragic part of history that will never be forgotten. It was because of that experience, that Elie Wiesel extensively depicted the events he faced through written and verbal accounts including the speech he gave entitled “The Perils of Indifference” on April 12, 1999. The speech was given at the 7th Millennium Evening at the White House, with an intent to create a kairotic moment with the public including the audiences it was broadcasted to, as an opportunity to explain a darker side of history, while also hopefully enlightening them for the future.

Imagine being plucked from your home and being brought to a camp to die or to work. Six million Jews died during the holocaust, but during this time there was hope. Even through difficult situations, the human spirit will always triumph. Laughter, love, and beauty of nature were what got these people through their tough times. For the people who were forced into hiding or being stuck at a camp, laughter could make them forgot everything around them.

The holocaust is notorious for its dark and horrific past. Among the horrible tragedies was the story of Elie Wiesel and his family. The experiences that Elie has faced throughout his years of life has have greatly influenced his perspective on society. In his speech, he explains how he was a survivor of the holocaust, what he has been through, and what he has done after the holocaust to help improve society and to preach his humanistic ideas. He explains how everyone is equal. Society must work together to make sure a horrific act such like the holocaust will never happen ever again. The holocaust deeply affected Elie Wiesel’s perspective on society and in his speech, he makes sure to make sure history does not repeat itself.

In Elie Wiesel's book, Night, the overlap of optimism and will for survival and faith kept many people in the Holocaust alive, including Elie Wiesel. The Holocaust was an agonizing time for many people. It was a mass persecution and murder of 6 million jews and 5 million non-jewish people. Some people targeted in the Holocaust were Jewish People, Homosexuals, the disabled, Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, Communists, and Socialists. They were sent to camps most of the time. Those who were deemed fit to work normally would be anybody over the age of 14 and appearing to be healthy, anybody else was sent to be executed. The Elderly and Women with Children had no chance of being deemed fit to work.

“Had he been able to speak to us that night, we might still have been able to flee” (Wiesel 14). During the time of the Holocaust in 1941, a friend is coming to warn a young boy by the name of Elie Wiesel that human rights violations are occurring all over Europe lead by a man named Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler's goal was to keep the Aryan race alive and kill all others deemed not fit. There were many warning signs to the Jewish population that trouble was near. Many chose not to listen, or to ignore help from others, but in the end, this choice leads to the loss of things tangible and intangible.

78 years ago, over seven million people were leading normal lives. They woke up in their beds, interacted with their families and friends, and followed their habitual routine. Those millions of people had something in common - they all followed the Jewish faith. When the Holocaust began, the Jews had to fight for their lives. Some were able to hide, and some fled the country. Many were forced into ghettos and concentration camps. Over six million Jews did not survive this terrible fate. Less than one million survived. Every one of their lives was irreversibly changed. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, it is revealed how dehumanization leads to loss of faith, proven by the aftermath of the Holocaust on its countless victims.

The Holocaust is widely known as one of the most horrendous and disturbing events in history that the world has seen; over six million lives were lost, in fact the total number of deceased during the Holocaust has never been determined. The footage of concentration camps and gas chambers left the world in utter shock, but photos and retellings of the events cannot compare to being a victim of the Holocaust and living through the horror that the rest of the world regarded in the safety of their homes. Elie Wiesel recognized the indifference that 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

Adolfo Kaminsky saved almost 10,000 children by creating counterfeits of legal documents through a Jewish resistance network he was recruited to in France. If he was caught helping helping the thousands of Jews escape, he would have been killed. However, being a Jew himself and recognizing the importance of having the right papers, he was ready to sacrifice his own life to save thousands of others. Kaminsky says, “‘The smallest error and you send someone to prison or death,’ he told me. ‘It’s a great responsibility. It’s heavy. It’s not at all a pleasure.’ Years later he’s still haunted by the work, explaining: ‘I think mostly of the people that I couldn’t save.’” This quote explains that his work was strenuous and tormenting, but he continued to forge papers to save the thousands of Jewish children who now had the opportunity to live their full lives. The work was tough on both his personal and family life. He could not disclose information about his work to any of his significant others, leading to a lack of any long-term relationship. However, he continued his work out of the kindness in his heart. Adolfo Kaminsky’s life work contributes to the theme that there are still good people in the world due to the fact that he risked his own life countless times to save countless