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The holocaust survivors paper
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More handpicked essays just for you.
The holocaust survivors paper
Essays about forgiveness
Research paper on holocaust survivors
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Type 4 Nora FCAs Summary Character Opinion Forgiveness “Is it possible to forgive and not forget? How can victims come to peace with their past, and hold on to their own humanity and morals in the process?” In The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal writes about an incident that occurs when he is imprisoned in a concentration camp. One day, when he is working in a hospital, he gets summoned to the room of a dying SS member.
In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.
What Would I do? There are many definitions of forgiveness. The dictionary defines forgiveness as “The disposition or willingness to forgive.” I agree with that, but I believe that forgiveness also lies in the hands of the victim and varies based on the crime.
Golden sunrays the shade of a sunflower stream through the glass panes. Simultaneously, shadows as dark as the death of an innocent man dance beside the sunshine (Wiesenthal 36). You perch on the edge of a hospital bed and listen in silence to a guilty and dying Nazi. He begs you for forgiveness for engaging in atrocities against humanity (Wiesenthal 54). What do you do?
The Effect Faith Can Have in Survival Many would say that throughout the Holocaust there were numerous individuals who were stripped of their beliefs. Prisoners strayed from the basic path of their natural instincts. Individuals who at one time gave everything for a spiritual leader, now wept at the feet of an unconquerable enemy. Some people blamed god for their terrible circumstance while others held onto their beliefs.
During 1944, Elie Wiesel was forced from his home to undertake a great trial, known by many as the Holocaust. After the grueling meat grinder, known by some as the Shoah, he had survived, and was able to write his experiences years after the event. In short, Wiesel wrote Night to remind people of the horrors and conditions he had experienced within the concentration camps. Years after the Holocaust occurs, Wiesel shows the harsh treatment on him and his peers, enforced by the Schutzstaffel, such as working with great starvation and tiredness. The writing reveals the feelings of oppressed; starved; weakening men under the rule of fascist Nazis.
Forgive, not because they deserve forgives, but because you deserve peace. It’s not easy to stop blaming someone’s fault, especially for someone who do wrong to us. In the book The Sunflower written by Simon Wiesenthal, a survivor of the Holocaust during World War II, he described his conflict with Karl, a dying Nazi soldier who killed many innocent Jews and begging for forgiveness for his outrageous crime at the end of his life. At the end of this sad and tragic episode, Simon did not response to Karl’s request directly; instead he left us a tough question: “What should you have done?” Based on what Karl had done during World War II and his repentance, each person might have their own point of view about where should we draw the line of forgiveness.
We are humans and a majority of us have dealt with heartache, pain, broken promises, along with the joyous things like dreams, aspirations, and successful futures. Humans mess up and make mistakes, but we have to remember that forgiveness is a very prestigious and powerful thing. Forgiveness affects people’s lives in positive ways through the hardships, difficulties, and struggles of life. There comes a time when forgiveness should not be available to some individuals. However, this depends on the past situations that have occurred in your life as well as other individuals.
In Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, the wounded Nazi committed unforgiveable acts against the Jewish people. While I am not Jewish, he has disgusted me and I do not think he is worthy of any form of forgiveness. I loosely define “forgiveness” as ceasing to be angry with someone for committing a wrongful act, or pardoning that person. In this book, Karl has shown to be not worthy of forgiveness, as he seeks it not out of remorse, but for personal gain. Karl’s sins range from murder to brutally beating the Jewish.
In his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel strives to inform his audience of the unbelievable atrocities of the Holocaust in order to prevent them from ever again responding to inhumanity and injustice with silence and neutrality. The structure or organization of Wiesel’s speech, his skillful use of the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos, combined with powerful rhetorical devices leads his audience to understand that they must never choose silence when they witness injustice. To do so supports the oppressors. Wiesel’s speech is tightly organized and moves the ideas forward effectively. Wiesel begins with humility, stating that he does not have the right to speak for the dead, introducing the framework of his words.
Wiesel pinpoints the indifference of humans as the real enemy, causing further suffering and lost to those already in peril. Wiesel commenced the speech with an interesting attention getter: a story about a young Jewish from a small town that was at the end of war liberated from Nazi rule by American soldiers. This young boy was in fact himself. The first-hand experience of cruelty gave him credibility in discussing the dangers of indifference; he was a victim himself.
The characterization of Moshie and Mrs. Shachter shows the indifference and denial of the Jews of Sighet. The chilling juxtaposition of a beautiful landscape containing a camp of death illustrates how the world not only was indifferent to the inhumane suffering, but also continued to shine brightly as if nothing really mattered. This timeless theme of denial and its consequences during the Holocaust echoes the struggles of those in our time who are persecuted solely due to their beliefs. The reader takes away the important lesson of never turning away from those who need it greatest, each time one reads Elie Wiesel’s memoir,
In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.
It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.
Elie Wiesel voiced his emotions and thoughts of the horrors done to Jewish people during World War II whilst developing his claim. Wiesel “remember[s] his bewilderment,” “his astonishment,” and “his anguish” when he saw they were dropped into the ghetto to become slaves and to be slaughtered. He repeats the words “I remember” because he and the world, especially those who suffered in the ghettos and camps, would never be able to forget how innocent suffered. Consequently, he emphasized that “no one” has the right to advocate for the dead. Like many other people in the world, he lost his family during the war.