Etty Hillesum's book An Interrupted Life is about a woman who is growing up in times of turmoil and despair. Reading a book that centers round the Holocaust, the reader knows that the woman's story will undoubtedly end in tragedy. Yet, when reading the book, the shadow of the impending future does not allow the woman's hope or faith to diminish. For those people who will never know the same kind of fear that Hillsum must have experienced in the concentration camps, her story makes us feel that we are extremely fortunate in our own lives. God willing we will never know the same kind of terror that Hillesum and her family were exposed to. We will more than likely not starve or work ourselves to death in the bitter cold or fear if it is our turns to be sent to the gas chamber for a "shower." Any problems we have just pale in comparison to hers. What makes her story so amazing is that even with all the violence and death and human degradation she was forced to witness, Etty Hillesum still held on tight to her faith in God. Her story inspires other people to continue believing and to persevere in times of trouble. The beginning of the diaries introduces the reader to Hillesum. She is a direct woman who is full of life and enjoys her body and...
This changes abruptly when the dangers of living in Holland begin to affect her life. "It is the problem of our age: hatred of Germans poisons everyone's mind" (11). Her initial impression of the group that would eventually murder her is that people hate them erroneously. She believes that though the German government may be in the wrong with their policies, it is still wrong to categorize them all as villains. If there is even one decent German person in the world, then hating them all is a sin. This is an important lesson Hillesum teaches to the readers of her diary, that it is easy to stereotype a whole group of people because of the actions of some of them; but, in doing so, the victims of the Holocaust become guilty of the same stereotyping as their enemies.
"Some Holocaust survivors have said that not only did the barbed-wire surrounding Auschwitz tremble and howl, but also the tortured earth itself moaned with the voices of the victims" (ISurvived.org). The first waves of prisoners arrived at Auschwitz in March, 1942, and from there on trains filled with people arrived on a regular basis, with the last years of the war seeing tens of thousands of prisoners arriving every day.
Ghettos The overall function, cause and purpose of ghettos varies a lot throughout history. However, the ghettos in Poland and other parts of what eventually became Nazi-controlled had a defined and definite purpose. Indeed, they were a way to separate and control the Jews that the Nazis wanted to confine and kill. Even with all of that, there were variations and performance reasons that led to the Nazis massaging and changing
Jews in Concentration Camps As early as 1933, Nazis were sending people to concentration camps most of them being the Jews. The concentration camps were confinements where Jews were forced to go to, tortured and forced to work. The camps were for the undesirable people according to the Nazis and they were; democrats, socialists, homosexuals, prisoners and Jews and during the war the camps held soviet prisoners of war and slave
This makes his argument less-than-convincing and too vague and philosophical in tone. Even many of his citations merely note authors, rather than actual page numbers. He references the authors' general ideas, rather than specific evidence they present. And some of the sources are in German, which make it difficult to trace his sources or even read the titles of many of the articles used in writing his piece. The most
The German suffering after the first world war and the humiliation of Germany with other nations gave the Nazis the opportunity to feed hatred of the Jews and at the same time promise that if the People gave in to the Nazi ideology, they would be in the land that would hold them a superior way of life. That the followers of Hitler followed the Ideals as true and that
Introduction Concentration camps are largely associated with Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s, which functioned as extermination camps where new-fangled influxes were basically killed. Past accounts of the establishment of concentration camps more often than not take their foundation as military catastrophes, with the Spanish regime making use of reconcentrados prior to the onset of the 20th Century in Cuba. Whereas the terminology of concentration camp was devised in the
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now