Declaration Of Human Rights By Elie Wiesel

Article five of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” (United Nations General Assembly). Although this is not the only human right violated in the Holocaust, it is one of the most demeaning. There is no possible way to account for every event that violated all thirty articles of the Declaration of Human Rights. More than 6,000,000 Jews, Gypsies, LGBTQ community members, physically and mentally disabled individuals, Jehovah Witnesses, and political oppression groups combined were brutally murdered over the course of twelve years.

Not only were these victims beaten and starved, they were talked to like rabid animals. In Elie Wiesel’s

“Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.” (Elie Wiesel). In this quote, Elie Wiesel is referring to becoming indifferent to pain and death. He is saying that once one has lost the ability to care, one no longer has a reason to live. The Nazi’s cruel and inhuman torture desensitized their victims. That is the cruelest punishment yet; to see friends and family die and feel nothing. To murder one’s own father for a ration of bread, for one to have lifeless bodies fall next to them daily, to smell the burning of human flesh, and feel nothing. “‘Meir, my little Meir! Don’t you recognize me… You’re killing your father!... I have bread… for you too… for you too…’ The old man mumbled something, groaned and died. Nobody cared.” (Weisel 32). Family members were no longer safe from each other. It was all for one and one for all at a time such as

According to a preliminary report from the UN, an untold number of people have died from unspeakable atrocities comparable to what the Nazi’s did. In 2013, head investigator, Michael Kirby, proclaims,"I believe you will be very disturbed and distressed by it and that you will have a reaction similar to those of General Eisenhower and the others who came upon the camps in postwar Europe.” (“The Stories from inside North Korea's Prison Camps Are Horrifying”). According to former prisoners, approximately twenty to twenty-five percent of the prison population dies each year due to unspeakable conditions. Similar to a public hanging in Auschwitz, any prisoner who tries, plans, or has knowledge of an escape is executed while other prisoners are forced to watch. The Koreans are fed gruel consisting of cornmeal and cabbage, comparable to a daily ration in the Holocaust. Rats and insects became an everyday necessity to avoid death by starvation. Shin Dong-hyuk lived in one of these camps for twenty-three years and is able to recall events that occurred during his time there. After his mother and brother were accused of attempting to escape, Shin Dong-hyuk was hung by his feet and tortured with fire. He also witnessed a mother forced to drown her baby in a bucket. Every single one of these occurrences in these prison camps are violations of article