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Critical Summary Of Victor Frankl's Experiences From A Concentration Camp

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Critical Summary Victor Frankl’s “Experiences from a Concentration Camp” from his book Man’s Search for Meaning details the everyday occurances of the average prisoner in a concentration camp. Through a series of brief stories accounting his experience in concentration camps, Frankl vividly depicts the suffering that he and other prisoners experienced and how these experiences affected them mentally. These stories demonstrate how the prisoners adapted their ways of thinking in order to ensure the survival of themselves and their friends. Survival techniques included doing anything in order to be seen as useful around the camp, using humor, and focusing one’s thoughts on love. Frankl describes how he and other prisoners used these techniques …show more content…

Mike Rose shows how learning is built through experience and practice in “A Vocabulary of Carpentry” and Viktor Frankl shares the effects of his experiences in a concentration camp during the Holocaust in “Experiences from a Concentration Camp”. Both readings touch on the ideas of phenomenology and experiential learning. Phenomenology is the study of consciousness through phenomena. In Frankl’s “Experiences from a Concentration Camp”, every experience he lived through contributed to his consciousness and self-awareness to his situation. The thoughts, emotions, and memories that Frankl experienced while enduring suffering and mistreatment as a prisoner shaped his understanding and perception towards life. Rose depicts phenomenology through the work of students. If someone were to look at a cabinet, there would be no emotional response or significant feelings toward it except to note that he or she puts their mugs there. But a student, who created this cabinet with their own hands, understands the amount of work, time, and effort that was put towards building this cabinet. The experiences of each observer, a random onlooker and the student carpenter, influence how each individual views the cabinet, and in a broader sense, their

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From the small town of Sighet in Transylvania to the huge concentration camps of Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, the author and victim of the book Night, the horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Wiesel is a 15 year old Jewish boy who was captured by the Germans or “Nazis” during WWII. He went through an overwhelming amount of trauma, like when he got separated from his mother and sisters and watching his father suffer an unbearable amount of pain that eventually killed him. The fact is, power is a tool that can corrupt itself and others, it can ruin people’s lives and it can do that without people even realizing it.

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Ever since humans came to be, they have done many things to ensure their survival. It’s the reason why we humans have evolved as much as we have. Humans have invented devices, accomplished many challenges, and have even relied on nothing but willpower to survive. When somebody survives a tragic event they are left with some terrifying memories that haunt them forever, but a few survivors are courageous enough to share their experience. Obviously, one of the shared experiences is the book called Night by Elie Wiesel.

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“‘I have terrible news,’ he said at last. ‘Deportation.’ The ghetto was to be completely wiped out. We were to leave street by street the following day” (Wiesel 11). Throughout the vast novel, Night,by Elie Wiesel, the protagonist Elie had gone through agonizing experiences, for the duration of the gruesome and unspeakable genocide.

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The severely cruel conditions of concentration camps had a profound impact on everyone who had the misfortune of experiencing them. For Elie Wiesel, the author of Night and a survivor of Auschwitz, one aspect of himself that was greatly impacted was his view of humanity. During his time before, during, and after the holocaust, Elie changed from being a boy with a relatively average outlook on mankind, to a shadow of a man with no faith in the goodness of society, before regaining confidence in humanity once again later in his life. For the first 13 years of his life, Elie seemed to have a normal outlook on humanity.

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Night and Day In the great history of man, there is no event committed as gut-wrenchingly ignoble as the Holocaust. Therefore, conveying the devastation and emotional trauma on a believable and personal level is a sign of fantastic writing, which can be seen in Elie Wiesel’s Night. Moreover, to take this awful situation and put an almost light-hearted twist on it is also increasable, which is seen in the film “Life is Beautiful.” Accordingly, both of these mediums portray main characters that are in concentration camps, but present them in varying ways that create stories that feel completely different.

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“A traumatic experience robs you of your identity” (Dr.Bill). Concentration camps during the agonizing Holocaust disallowed their prisoners to obtain a personal identity. The renowned memoir, Night, written by Holocaust survivor, Eliezer Wiesel, published in 1954 expands the apprehension of the life altering challenges and torment the Jewish society encountered from 1933 to 1945. Identity consists of an individual's distinctive characteristics, beliefs and mannerisms which was forbidden for the Jewish hostages of the Holocaust to attain. Elie’s identity was shaped and reshaped by the traumatic experiences the Jewish community persevered through.

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After going through so much, many people do not have the same mindset as they did before. Being tortured and watching others being tortured changes a person’s life, especially Elie’s, his father’s, Moshe the Beadle’s, and Rabbi Eliahou’s. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, shares his own experience of going through a concentration camp, and it is clear that many things in his life changed

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The human condition is a very malleable idea that is constantly changing due to the current state of mankind. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the concept of the human condition is displayed in the worst sense of the concept, during the Holocaust of WWII. During this time, multiple groups of people, most notably European Jews, were persecuted against and sent to horrible hard labor and killing centers such as Auschwitz. In this memoir, Wiesel uses complex figurative language such as similes and metaphors to display the theme that a person’s state as a human, both at a physical and emotional level, can be altered to extreme lengths, and even taken away from them, under the most extreme conditions.

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Losing faith is like clearing off a foggy windshield. The true pain and suffering of the world are revealed. During the Holocaust, the SS would often force prisoners to witness the deaths of fellow prisoners, to scare them into obeying the SS and to show the prisoners what would happen to them if they did not follow orders. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses symbolism and metaphors to show the theme that suffering will weaken religious faith.

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The Holocaust was an immoral machination orchestrated by the Nazi’s to eliminate any person who did not meet their criteria of a human. Millions were interned in camps all around Europe. Each person who survived the Holocaust has a different story. Within Elie Wiesel’s Night (2006) and the movie “Life is Beautiful” (2000) two different perspectives on the Holocaust are presented to audiences both however deal with the analogous subjects faced by prisoners. Inside both works you can find the general mood of sadness.

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To find a man who has not experienced suffering is impossible; to have man without hardship is equally unfeasible. Such trials are a part of life and assert that one is alive by shaping one’s character. In the autobiographical memoir Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, this molding is depicted through Elie’s transformation concerning his identity, faith, and perspective. As a young boy, Elie and his fellow neighbors of Sighet, Romania were sent to Auschwitz, a macabre concentration camp with the sole motive of torturing and killing Jews like himself. There, Elie experiences unimaginable suffering, and upon liberation a year later, leaves as a transformed person.

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