“Homeland is something one becomes aware of only through its loss, Gunter Grass.” In Peter Gay’s memoir, My German Question, he articulates what it was like living in Germany with the presence of the Nazis or in his own experience the lack there of. Peter lived in a family that didn’t directly practice Judaism and most German families didn’t perceive them as Jews until the Nazis defined what a Jew was to the public. The persecution of other Jewish families in Germany where far worse than what Peter experienced growing up. There was a major contrast between how Gay’s family was treated and how other Jews who actively practiced the religion in Germany were treated which played a contributing factor for why the family stayed so long before they left.
Many lives were lost during the German’s attempt to wipe out all Jews, and those who lived lost a part of their life during this time. The young boys lost their childhood and ‘innocences’. They witness more death and suffering than anywhere in the country. Today, there is still death and violence against others.
Our flag represents the new era, chant Hans and Herribert, our flag leads us to eternity.” (Doerr, 42) This passage provided a better image of how naive and brainwashed civilians of the Nazi regime became. The author provides a description which underlyingly emphasizes the historical aspect of the book; readers can infer the time period and location just from the greetings used and the manner of the citizens. Because the general traffic on streets today have a destination or purpose, I found it interesting that people seemed to casually inhabit
Critically Analyze an Excerpt from Main Kampf (Volume 1, Chapter 11) by Adolph Hitler In (Volume 1, Chapter 11) of Main Kampf, Adolf Hitler discusses “Nation and Race” in attempts to distinguish the Aryan race from the inferior race, the Jewish. He presents his claim by using anti-Semitic imagery, which is a form of discrimination against Jewish people (anti-Semitic, 2016). He also uses propaganda to convince the masses to follow his sophism. This paper will review (Volume 1, Chapter 11) titled “Nation and Race”, and will evaluate the persuasive techniques used by Adolf Hitler while applying rhetorical analysis.
To the reader the word “Jew” symbolizes pain, suffering, and enslavement. In the end, using hidden meaning behind words are essential when talking about the
The two sources being used in this paper is FDR and the Jews by Breitman, Richard, and Allan J. Lichtman (2013) and Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust by Robert N. Rosen (2006). The Origin of the first source is a book written By Richard Breitman
In the years of the Holocaust, darkness shadowed the Jewish people. They were forced to be ripped apart from their families, they were starved to the point of death, and they were overall dehumanized. These traumatizing events inspired Elie Wiesel to write his memoir, Night, which caused him to give a detailed record of the horrors of humanity that he endured. This also played a part in his speech “The Perils of Indifference”. Unfortunately, the world is not filled with light.
“Under A Cruel Star” despite being an excellent book to read was not credible or believable as compared to Kevin McDermott’s scholarly article. Heda Kovaly depicts popular opinion under Communist dictatorship as being controlled by terror of the government. She states that popular opinion no longer comprised morals or humanity, but instead was uttered by fear and doubts of the consequences of their actions and the domination of the government. This significance of life can be explored and tested against details found in secondary sources. “Under A Cruel Star”, a primary source, provides personal experiences through the political difficulties of Jews while secondary source in Kevin McDermott’s article provides accurate facts of events that
Hans Fallada’s novel Little Man What Now, illustrates the story of a German man who hits low points throughout his life. Pinneberg is the man that is forced to marry when he gets his girlfriend pregnant. He struggles from one job to another and is struggling to support his family. This story depicts the overwhelming reality of a middle class family in Germany.
Sebastian Haffner, in his memoir Defying Hitler, describes the rise of National Socialism within Germany during the interwar years that were plagued with thoughts of war, poverty and defeat. Lives that previously had purpose and were connected through mass culture surrounding the ‘Great War’, were now barren. This war-ravaged void left behind from World War One, that had been previously placated by political headlines, war reports, stock quotes and sport statistics, left the German people deprived of any personal fulfilment and balance within their private lives. This deprivation allowed Hitler’s nationalist message, and propaganda for the Nazi regime, to pervade German thoughts, winning a battle over the German minds. This battle, as Haffner
Perils of Indifference delivers his message effectively, but not to the same degree of his memoir, for it isn’t able to explore these the horrors of the Holocaust, and use the same extent of literary terms because of its length
Many Germans, during WWII had started to take on the ideology of Hitler – that Jewish citizens in Germany were the cause of their poverty and misfortune. Of course, many knew that this was merely a form of scapegoating, and although they disagreed with the majority of Germany’s citizens, many would not speak up for fear of isolation (Boone,
The Holocaust is a shining example of Anti-Semitism at its best and it was no secret that the Nazis tried to wipe out the Jews from Europe but the question is why did the Nazis persecute the Jews and how did they try to do it. This essay will show how the momentum, from a negative idea about a group of people to a genocide resulting in the murder of 6 million Jews, is carried from the beginning of the 19th Century, with pseudo-scientific racial theories, throught the 20th century in the forms of applied social darwinism and eugenics(the display of the T4 programme), Nazi ideas regarding the Jews and how discrimination increased in the form of the Nuremberg Laws , Kristallnacht, and last but not least, The Final Solution. Spanning throughout the 19th century, racial theories were seen. Pseudo-Scientific theories such as Craniometry,where the size of one’s skull determines one’s characteristics or could justifies one’s race( this theory was used first by Peter Camper and then Samuel Morton), Karl Vogt’s theory of the Negro race being related to apes and of how Caucasian race is a separate species to the Negro race, Arthur de Gobineau’s theory of how miscegenation(mixing or interbreeding of different races) would lead to the fall of civilisation.
Fighting Against Hate & Intolerance in the Holocaust It is a widely known fact that eleven million people were brutally murdered in the Holocaust. Many people argue that the roots of these killings were hate and intolerance. During World War II, innumerable people were victims of Adolf Hitler’s widespread beliefs that the Aryan race was better than others. Unfortunately, they had to endure this prejudice for a very long time, but many heroes fought against these unfair views. The characters of The Book Thief, Eva’s Story, Paper Clips, and The Whispering Town all show amazing courage and cleverness when fighting against the hate and intolerance the Jews and other persecuted people endured.
Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader, set in Germany in the post-World War II era, explores the social and cultural tensions between the Nazi and Post – Nazi generations in the aftermath of the Third Reich. Schlink uses literary techniques in The Reader to evoke the reader’s sympathy for flawed characters. Schlink does this through using motifs, symbolism, and foreshadowing to portray the protagonists flaw of inferiority and Hanna’s illiteracy. Characterisation and imagery are used to portray the character’s actions, and as a result, the reader’s perception of the characters change throughout the novel.
