The physicality of pain, the hunger, the feces and spit, all the brutalities that served to dehumanize them became precisely what brought the survivors out of the camps alive. Many if not most survivors were purely lucky. All learned how to live with dehumanization: to live while being dehumanized. All were able to resist succumbing to the belief that they were truly inhuman creatures, and all rose above and re-humanized themselves when they re-entered the world. Survivors use the process and act of remembering as the key to rehumanizing themselves. To rejoin the human race, they must remember the compassion and empathy they felt for their fellow prisoners: the images so deftly recalled in Holocaust literature and poetry. Only the stories of survivors exist to recreate the holocaust experience. As Andrei states in "The Last Camp," "our ideas would survive but the Nazi evil wouldn't."
When Gotfryd states, "I couldn't believe I was free again," he realizes fully that it is utterly impossible to be dehumanized. The holocaust victims were tortured but they remained human. It is only possible to dehumanize others. Living with fear, accepting torture while clinging to hope: are signs of humanity. Dehumanization is an act, a crime. The victim never actually participates in his or her own dehumanization unless that person actively commits a dehumanizing act.
Borowski's explicit treatment of the holocaust in This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen details the process of dehumanization and shows how dehumanization depends on segregating the self from the rest of the human race. Denying the unity of the human race and numbing oneself to the pain of others is the only way to dehumanize. On the contrary, sacrificing the self to save others is the ultimate affirmation of human love and survival.
The Girl from Auschwitz." From the Black Book. Ehrenburg, Ilya and Grossman, Vasily. Eds. New York: Holocaust Library.
Gotfryd, Bernard. "The Execution," "Hans Burger: #15252." And "The Last Camp." In Anton the Dove Fancier and other Tales of the Holocaust. Washington Square: 1990.
Hamburger, Michael. "Treblinka." In Schiff, Hilda. (Ed) Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1995.
Fogel, Ephraim. "Shipment to Maidanak." In Schiff, Hilda. (Ed) Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1995.
Schiff, Hilda. "Babbi Yar," From Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1995.
Tsirolnitsky, M. "Twenty-Six Months in Auchwitz." In the Black Book. Ehrenburg, Ilya and Grossman, Vasily. Eds. New York: Holocaust Library.
Zyck, Adam. "Auschwitz, 1987." In Schiff, Hilda. (Ed) Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1995.
Gotfryd, Bernard. "The Execution." p. 117
Gotfryd, p. 116
Borowitz p. 122
Borowski, T., This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Introduction p. 15
The Girl from Auschwitz No. 74233." P. 477.
Gotfryd, p. 136
Gotfryd, p. 138
Borowitz, p. 112
Tsirolnitsky, M. "Twenty-Six Months in Auchwitz." p. 490
Fogel, Ephraim. "Shipment to Maidanek."
Schiff, H. "Babii Yar."
Hamburger, M. "Treblinka." P. 56 in Schiff, H.
Tsirolnitsky, M. "Twenty-Six Months in Auchwitz." P. 499
Zyck, Adam. "Auschwitz, 1987."
Godfryd p. 147
Gotfryd p. 152
The 1964 film Dr. Strangelove uses the context of Cold War brinksmanship in order to uncover a more fundamental problem with patriarchy and the maintenance of a destructive masculinity. This masculinity is under threat as a result of sexual frustration, and the characters of Ripper, Turgidson, and Kong embody three different kinds of this frustration. Ripper's sexual frustration is the most explicit, and leads to the most overtly violent reaction.
In "Piaf," Pam Gems provides a view into the life of the great French singer and arguably the greatest singer of her generation -- Edith Piaf. (Fildier and Primack, 1981), the slices that the playwright provides, more than adequately trace her life. Edith was born a waif on the streets of Paris (literally under a lamp-post). Abandoned by her parents -- a drunken street singer for a mother and a
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