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One event was able to affect someone in such a way. She wasn’t the only one either. 0,000 people were liberated from these camps and many, if not all, of which were given a different view on life. It’s not hard to understand why. Seeing people every day who were sick or diseased with no treatment or people who were malnourished with little food. Smelling the burning flesh of dead human corpses being burned in a giant oven. Sleeping on wooden bunks every night and having to do excruciating work for little to no payment. People were euthanized.
Having their name removed in place of a number. They were not human anymore. They were objects to be used however seemed fit and they had to oblige. No matter how gruesome the task may have been. The emotion felt by survivors holds so much power and has such important meaning to the understanding of the life of those who were affected. Many people were affected by the war. The adults, the children, and even those of us who live in the present day have been affected by the holocaust. Those affects vary from being negative and even positive. The Survivors In the film Forgiving Dry.
Mingle, Eva Koru talks about the process of forgiving German Doctor Josef Mingle also known as the “Angel of Death” for his inhumane treatment ND experimentation on her and her twin sister as well as the killing of millions of human beings. What she said was, in a way, hard to believe. In the same sense, it’s easy to understand. You are young. You are still learning and understanding life. All of a sudden, you are put somewhere and treated a certain way for reasons that don’t seem to make sense to you. The most interesting thing about this quote is it describes how she lives her life post WI.
She looks at the world today and thinks of it as a concentration camp. This is coming from someone who endured some of the cost tragic living conditions in the history of mankind and she compares those experiences to the scale of the world. Her mind circles around the thought of “The world is capable of unspeakable things so I must be prepared for the worst. ” Vera Krieger, a former Mingle twin talks about Dry. Mingle, “… He’s like me. He has two eyes. He has a nose. He has a mouth. He has ears. He is no different than me. Why is he doing this to me? ” She’s saying he’s human.
She notices the similarities between them or maybe she notices the few differences. Why would a human being treat another human being this way? I think that is why Eva Koru lives the way she does believing what she believes, that the world is a concentration camp. Being in the camp made her believe something, it made her believe that anyone was possible of doing anything no matter how traumatic or how unthinkable it may be. I think that she believed that there are people in charge in society and that even though they may be capable of coming across as believable, harmless, and truthful that they are capable of the worst things possible.
One of Eve’s friends mentioned a few things about Eve’s life. “Impact from it is observable in many ways… He never leaves any food on her plate. If we are every going anywhere where there is breakfast stuff, she always wraps up something to take with her. When she sleeps in the room at night, we have to have the chain locked, the pad locked and she sleeps on her purse. So it’s like her possessions in Auschwitz that you had to safeguard so closely. Never wanting to be hungry again. Never losing all her possessions again. Just little things like that that I think are remnants of the experiences she’s had. (Forgiving Dry. Mingle). Eva believes that based on her experiences in Auschwitz that she could potentially be vying the same way in everyday life. That she could starve at any moment. So to prevent this, she has to eat every little piece of food and that she needs to bring food with her because maybe she will not have any food all of a sudden. Eve’s friend also mentions how Eva has many locks on the side of her door and how she makes sure every one of them is locked before she goes to bed at night, and how Eva sleeps on her purse. She is incapable of trusting anyone.
She surrounds herself with the most amount of security as possible. She sleeps on her possessions so no one can take hem while her door has been nearly dead bolted shut. The concentration camp taught her a lifestyle that cannot be taught by way of word but by way of experience and a terrifying experience at that. She became affected by how her life was during her days in the camp and she incorporated those aspects into her everyday life. A Different Perspective Is it really possible that out of all this terror there is a glimpse of positivist?
Setting aside the fact that roughly 7 million people were killed as a result of a horrific tragedy, can we say that this can’t be perceived in an optimistic way? Realistically, there are things that you can take away from the Holocaust and sass Germany society that actually helped shape the post-holocaust world in a productive or positive way. People have different views on this issue. Debate. Org is a blob website and asked the question “Was the Holocaust a good thing? ” Probably not the best or most sensitive wording for a question, but regardless, people weighed in.
One comment titled Light in a Dark Place says “… We benefited from one of the largest medical information surpluses, many procedures that are used in modern medicine, long with many base drugs that we have built… We built a stronger America, Modern Munitions, Experimental weapons… Created a stronger immunity to powerful motivational speakers. It was a modern day genocide that hit the home front hard enough that hopefully we can stay prepared and fend off future tragedies. ” (Ralston). When I read this I had a hard time believing that benefits could come from such unethical human treatment and experimentation.
I then found a point made by Sir Richard Evans, a British academic and historian (Wisped) who argues the science behind the experiments. He recognizes that, “We all have an image in our minds of the role of scientists in Nazi Germany: sinister, lab-coated figures who spent half their time conducting gruesome – and largely pointless – experiments on concentration-camp inmates to gratify their own cruel impulses, and the other half devising futuristic weapons of mass destruction for Hitler to hurl at the advancing Allies in a last attempt to stave off defeat.
Yet once you dig a little deeper, what is so disturbing is how prosaic the reality was, how similar in form, if not content, their work was to the research of today… Such of what scientists did under the Third Reich was regarded as “normal science”, subject to standard protocols of peer review in conferences and Journals. The infamous Dry. Josef Mingle regarded himself as a normal scientist, held seminars to discuss his experiments, got research funds from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and reported regularly to his teacher, the eminent scientist Tomato von Persevere, on his progress. (Science Blobs) He describes how we all have this certain image of German scientists that stereotypical with a white lab coat and conducting “gruesome” experiments. He points out that if we were to look past that stereotype and the inhumane experiments, that Dry. Mingle still performed acts of science. He reported his findings in seminars. He seemed to have a purpose for what he was doing. Even though you may look at the means of how he would achieve his purpose as moral, it was still legit science.
Hearing something that is recognized as a positive can make you a little angry. You hear “extermination” and “humans” in the same sentence and we’re all taught it is negative or bad thing. It can be hard to look at something of this nature objectively. If you were able to, you’d realize that certain terrible things helped benefit today’s society. Medical improvements is an important physical aspect ideal that came from the Holocaust. One thing being left out is the psychological aspect. How should people think, good or bad thoughts?
Alice Here Somber who as the oldest living survivor at the time of this interview in 2011 at 109 years old, says “Optimism and looking for the good” is why she feels so good at her age while still acknowledging, “l know about the bad things but I look to the good things. “(Look for the Beauty in Life) She’s a huge inspiration to those of us who undergo such tragedy in our life. She shows us that we don’t have an excuse to hold a grudge or be bitter about anything because she overcame the biggest human extermination in history, and only looks at life from an optimistic or arguably a realistic viewpoint.
No matter how tragic of an event it was, you are still able to find something that can be positively affected by the actions taken. In this case, through procedures on people in a horrifying way, German doctors were able to push science forward which in turn affected how science ended p today Through a Child’s Viewpoint During one of the greatest human tragedies in human history, some of the best recorded information of how the Jews were treated were of the Jewish children.
On Youth, the video I’m Still Here Holocaust Survivor Diaries gave a few Journal entries from the Jewish children and what they endured from the non-Jewish citizens surrounding their everyday life. A few Journals found were written by two Jewish boys, a fifteen year old named Tickets Radishes from Lithuania and a twelve year old named Aid Rubbishing of Poland. Aid writes “Early this morning the police came. As they were driving on the high way, they met a Jew who was going out of town and they immediately shot him for no reason. Then they drove and shot a Jewish woman again for no reason.
So two victims have absolutely perished for no reason at all. All the way home I was very frightened. “(Aid) He talks about how these police, these government employed people whose Job is to protect citizens from harm are indeed inflicting harm on those that were citizens, but were unfortunately Jewish citizens when they were pulled over. The fact that Aid talks bout how these Jews were not engaging in any type of dangerous physical activity towards these policemen such as fighting or having any sort of weapon helps you to understand how Jews were affected by, in a sense, the government.
Their weapon was their Jewish heritage and their crime was that they were living. He lived in such fear from something as simple as driving home and at the possibility of being recognized by the government as a Jew. He understood that if that happened to those two random people, that it could happen to him and his family and that it would be the end of himself and his family. Another example of this overwhelming fear comes from Hookahs Radishes who writes “We are like animals surrounded by the hunter.
The hunter beneath us above us, on the sides… I feel the enemy beneath the boards on which I am standing… Slowly everything calms down by itself. My heart beats with such Joy. I have remained alive. ” He is talking about hiding in an attic while Nazi’s are walking through the house. They hid in the attic to protect themselves from being taken to a camp or more probable, being killed. Hinted by the wording “l have remained alive”. Hotshot describes the Nazi’s as being hunters and IM as being the animal.
He demeans himself down to being an animal because of the nature to which Jews are forced to live. They are looked down at by the government and the society in which they live. He is aware that at any moment if a “hunter” notices him, he could be killed like an “animal” without any sort of hesitation. Hotshot posted another Journal entry in which it says “For a long time I could not put on the badge. I was ashamed to appear with one on the street. Not because it would be noticed I am a Jew, but because I was ashamed for what they were doing to us.
I was ashamed of our helplessness. The yellow badge he is referring to is piece of cloth that the Jews were to wear that identified them as being Jews and was one of many psychological tactics aimed at isolating and dehumidifying the Jews of Europe, directly marking them as being different (I. E. , inferior) to everyone else. (Holocaust Badges) He talks about how he got to a moment in his life where he didn’t want to feel so different and feel like such an outcast.
He wanted to fit in because then he would know he would not have to worry, that he could feel safe and be treated well. He says that he doesn’t want to wear it because he doesn’t want to go wrought all the torment and ridicule he has to go through as a Jew. Not that he was ashamed of being a Jew but that he disliked what was being done to Jews. Which is understandable considering the wrong psychological thinking by the German government. You can see based on what these kids have been through how they were affected or treated during tough times. They had to hide to live.
They had to remain unseen by Nazi’s so they may survive at least one more day A German Citizen’s Perspective We always think about the Jews and German government and how they thought ND what they went through. What we don’t think about is what ran through the minds of German citizens and what took place in their daily lives. These people, who weren’t directly involved in the campaigns against the Jewish, still lived everyday life as though nothing seemed to have been going on around them. Brigit Ice at age fifteen in Germany started writing a Journal about her life during WI.
According to Spiegel Online International in the article titled Hairdos and Movies: The Carefree Life of a Teen in Wartime Berlin, between the years of 1942 to 1945 she writes in her urinal every day and only referring once in the entire diary to the Nazis’ systematic deportations of Jews. It came on February 27th 1943 when she writes how she, “went to the opera to see ‘The Four Ruffians. ” When she left she “got on the underground train at Alexandrine” and how three soldiers started to talk to her and her friend and then ends her Journal with “Jews all over town are being taken away, including the tailor across the road. She mentions these other things that happened to her in her day and then seems to talk about the “Jews all over town are being taken away’ tit what seems like no emotion. She seems to show more interest towards these other things that happened and that this part where she notices the Jews being taken away was more of an observation. She didn’t seem to understand what was happening but that it was Just happening. Under the heading Youthful Indifference in the article, she talks about how her son always said to her “How could you have been so oblivious? And she would respond with “l never saw a thing! ” It seems a little hard to believe that she would be unaware of German society actions towards Jews. It mess as if either she didn’t care about what was happening outside of herself seeming a little selfish or she really was that oblivious. Regardless, you are able to notice the affect that a basic girl in German society had and the what she was capable of inflicting and that it is how aware we are in society that defines who we are and what we could be capable of affecting.
Conclusion The adults, the children, and even those of us who live in the present day have been affected by the holocaust. Those affects vary from being negative and even positive. You should remember that things can happen in our life that can shape how e think and act in everyday society and that people are capable of doing anything from shooting you without cause or pointing you out for your so called faults.
You should remember that it is possible to find a positive in the most horrific negative events, and that we need to be aware of what goes on around us and understand how we may affect our lives and the lives of others. The difference in all these is how you choose to look at its outcome and how you choose to let it affect you. That is what separates us from one another which in turn affects how we do one thing, survive.