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Acts of help and bravery during the holocaust
Holocaust survivors and their stories
Holocaust survivors and their stories
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Recommended: Acts of help and bravery during the holocaust
In the documentary, One Survivor Remembers, Gerda Weissmann recalls her miraculous survival of the Nazi concentration camps. Throughout her survival, Gerda Weissman shows personality traits of courage, perseverance, and compassion. When Gerda Weissmann was fifteen years old Germany seized control over Poland and all Jewish Poles were confined to small living quarters of their houses. Gerda Weissmann’s ability to keep calm and go on living in that situation showed true bravery because a girl her age would surely panic and develop a negative personality. Gerda Weissmann is possibly most courageous when she separated from her family and has to go to Dulag transit camp, while the rest of her family is sent to Auschwitz.
The memoir Boy 30529 by Felix Weinberg is a detailed and insightful account of the horrifying experiences of the author during his life prior, during and after the holocaust. What makes Felix Weinberg’s memoir so compelling is that his authentic experiences and first person narrative bring to life the atrocities of the war. Weinberg waited 69 years to tell his story, however, Boy 30529 not only tells the truth, but does so in a raw, descriptive, and heartfelt manner. The fact that he lived through the horrors is what makes this source both reliable and impactful.
Many people have learned about the Holocaust throughout the years, but learning about it from a primary source is a whole different experience. A scary journey that turned out to be the Holocaust has been told by two individuals that survived. These two stories tell the reader what life was like and what they went through. Even though the conditions were terrible, both Eli and Lina were able to survive and break away through fear, horrendous experiences, and hope that lead them to surviving and leaving people they cared about behind.
Nyiszlis story is contributed greatly to the history of the Holocaust. Although people might say the way Dr. Nyiszli acted in Auschwitz wasn’t right, he did it so he can share his story and the truth with everyone. He had a reason for it all. Now the world knows how cruel and cold-hearted they had to be to do all those evil things. Nyiszli tells us how SS officers were so heartless that they put thousands of people in ovens without even caring.
In December 1939, Poland was being torn apart by the savagery of the Holocaust. Oskar Schindler took his first faltering steps from the darkness of Nazism towards the light of heroism. “If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car,” he said later of his wartime actions, “wouldn't you help him?” Poland had been a relative haven for Jewish people and it numbered over 50,000 people, but when Germany invaded, destruction began immediately and it was very harsh. Jews was forced into crowded ghettos, randomly beaten and humiliated, and continuously murdered for no reason.
During World War II, the German Reich marched across the entire continent of Europe. During the Holocaust, many people became discouraged and lost hope in the future of society. However, the excerpts from “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” written by herself, and “Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, prove that being positive and persevering is the best thing that someone can do. Whether hiding from the Nazis or already taken by them, the best response to have during conflict and chaos is maintaining a positive outlook on life and to persist through difficult times.
“Night” by Elie Wiesel is one of the most famous books about the Holocaust, still persisting at the top of the Western bestseller lists. Its canvas are the memories of the writer, journalist, Nobel Peace Prize winner, who at the age of fifteen, was with his family deported to Birkenau. After selection was sent to Auschwitz, then to one of its subsidiaries - Monowitz. In 1945 he was evacuated to Buchenwald, where he lived to see the end of the war.
When asking anyone what the Holocaust is, there is a very standard answer as to what it was. It is infamously known as the mass killings and imprisonment of Jewish people throughout most of Western Europe. What people fail to acknowledge is that there is more to the Holocaust than this “standard answer.” There have been multiple accounts of what it was like to be in the Holocaust such as the famous books The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Night by Elie Wiesel. The memoir A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy by Thomas Buergenthal serves the same purpose as any text about this atrocity has served: to inform the public about what truly went on in the concentration camps and beyond.
Since 1945, many victims of the Holocaust have documented their horrific experiences. Some recorded their experiences solely to stay sane, but most survivors feared that the world would forget the atrocities of the Second World War. Since the late 1940s, thousands of different Holocaust memoirs have been published. Undoubtedly, what binds most of these authors is the fact that they have all faced severe loss, questioned the existence of God, and felt the desperate need for hope. Their awareness, understanding and judgement were also severely put to the test.
Though there are many differences and variations in sources from the Holocaust, whether it be Night written by Elie Wiesel, Life is Beautiful directed by Roberto Benigni, or multiple accounts from Holocaust survivors from an article called Tales from Auschwitz by The Guardian, they all will agree that it was a terrible and unforgivable atrocity committed not only to the Jewish people, but all of mankind. One similarity that the three sources share, as baffling and terrifying as it
Elie Wiesel and his family made the decision to not bear witness for many reasons, but in the end they came to regret it. His way of making sure that others do not make the same mistake was through his memoir Night. The only thing thing that came from The Holocaust are the lessons we learn from it. This is why it is essential for people to bear witness at all times. History tries to repeat itself.
He is very well known for his memoir “Night” and his speech “Perils of Indifference.” The message is much more prominent in his book “Night” rather than his speech. Real life examples are provided, it is more understandable, and it leaves you with something to think about. The length, connections, and abundant amount of description helps promote the message as well as the book tells us why we can never let such indifference as the Holocaust happen again.
These survivors who experienced this event, have been scarred for the rest of their life. We can listen to their stories but we can’t imagine and experienced what they have gone through. For example, Szymon Binke, Hilma Geffen, and Baker Ella, were the survivors of the Holocaust. Szymon Binke was born in 1931 in Poland, his family moved to the city after the Nazi’s invasion. Nazis deported his family to Auschwitz where his mother and sister were gassed, while, Szymon was placed in Kinder block but after sometime he ran away to meet his family in Auschwitz.
Elie Wiesel once stated “for the dead and the living, we must bear witness”. Remembrance of historical events is vitally important for the collective narrative. If horrific events such as the Holocaust are allowed to be forgotten, then we have forgotten the significance of the event and debased the people who died. In order to keep the event in the collective narrative, as a way of creating a universal understanding of the tragedy not only for the sake of those directly involved, but also as a warning to future generations, we must as Wiesel states “bear witness”.
Like many genocides the Holocaust was one of the worst recorded in history. The Holocaust happened during World War II when Hitler became the leader of Germany in 1933. The War was mostly present in Europe, East Asia or the Pacific Islands but the Holocaust, which was a genocide of Jews, took place in Europe. Nazi’s and SS officers would storm the houses of Jews and move them into ghettos eventually ending up in a concentration camp. Some would die on their way there but mostly all the deaths occured in the camps.
