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The psychological effects of the holocaust on Jews
The psychological effects of the holocaust on Jews
The psychological effects of the holocaust on Jews
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The book Night is about the holocaust as experienced by Elie Weisel from inside the concentration camps. During World War II millions of innocent Jews were taken from their homes to concentration camps, resulting in the deaths of 6 million people. There were many methods of survival for the prisoners of the holocaust during World War II. In the book Night, there were three main modes of survival, faith, family, and food. From the examples in the book Night, faith proved to be the most successful in helping people survive the holocaust.
While obtaining food seemed to be the entire purpose of life for the people imprisoned in the camps, it often killed more people than it saved. Though focusing on food seemed like a logical thing to do when you are being starved, it was not always very effective in helping people survive. There are many situations in the book illustrating how living for the sole purpose of acquiring food—under any condition—could turn out to be lethal.
Elie wrote of one time, during an air raid, when two half-full cauldrons of soup were left unguarded in a path. Despite their hunger, the prisoners were too frightened for their lives to even touch the cauldrons. One brave man dragged himself to the cauldrons intending to drink some of the forbidden soup. Before he could so much as take a small taste of the soup, he was shot, and he fell to the ground, dead. In Night, Elie recalled him as a 'Poor hero, committing suicide for a ration of soup'; (Weisel, 56).
Later in the story, there is yet another example of how food could kill. While the prisoners were in cattle cars, being moved to a different camp, a worker in one of the towns they passed through threw a piece of bread into one of the cars, and watched as they literally killed for just a mouthful. Through that experience, Elie witnessed a man kill his own father for a few meager crumbs of bread, only then to see that man be killed moments later for the same small portion of bread. 'Men threw themselves on top of each other, stamping on each other, tearing at each other. Wild beasts of prey, with animal hatred in their eyes; an extraordinary vitality had seized then, sharpening their teeth and nails'; (Weisel, 95). Clearly, food as a method survival wasn't a particularly effective way to stay alive.
He could not believe that the God he followed tolerated such things. During times of sorrow, when everyone was praying and sanctifying His name, Elie no longer wanted to praise the Lord; he was at the point of giving up. The fact that the “Terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent”(33) caused Elie to lose hope and faith. When one chooses to keep silent about such inhumanity going on, they are just as destructive as the one causing the brutality.... ...
The tragedies of the Holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events of the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past.
About halfway through his imprisonment, Eliezer had gotten accustomed to life in a concentration camp. Despite the magnitude of death in every camp Elie was held hostage, nothing was worse than when three people were hanged in front of his eyes. The people were convicted suspiciously without confirmation of their crime; the youngest of which was about a twelve year old boy who was an assistant to one of the Nazi Kapos. After this experience, Wiesel writes, “That night, the soup tasted of corpses.” (65). The author incorporates a metaphor for his feelings and related it to the soup Eliezer was given; the soup did not literally taste like corpses, but this was how he felt because of all the death. The symbolism of his soup tasting like corpses relates to how death was surrounding Wiesel at the camp, and it also represents how he has lost faith in God. There were many places throughout the book in which Elie experiences things that make him question his faith, none more than when he thought there would be no chance of his
Food depravation is a method that people use to affect the human spirit in a negative way. In the story Maus by Art Spiegelman, food is used to make the prisoners weak. For example, at the concentration camp Art’s dad is talking to his fellow prisoner Mandelbaum “I spilled most of my soup too. When I asked for more, they BEAT me" (Spiegelman pg. 29). This affects the human spirit because when people typically ask for more food, they don't get beaten. Food is also used as a currency in the camps. In this scene, Art’s dad is talking to the gestapo and the gestapo wants Vladek to fix his boot; “Can you fix this? I’ll give you a day’s ration of bread. For a day’s ration of bread I can fix anything! Next day I had the boot ready for this gestapo….Hmm. He left the boot and went without one word. And he came back with a whole sausage. You did a good job” (Spiegelman pg. 61). Food is used as currency because in this case Vladek had a skill of fixing boots and his reward for doing a good job was a whole sausage. This shows how valuable food is in the concentration camps. In the story Farewell to Manzanar, food is also used to destroy the human spirit. Jeanne, the author, is being fed by the staff at the camp and her meal was ".... scoops of canned Vienna sausage, canned string beans, steamed rice that had been cooked too long, and on top of the rice a serving of canned apricots. The Caucasian servers were thinking that...
The Jews that knew each other wanted to stick together to help out each other but it didn’t always work so Elie’s father and Stein gave a portion of their bread to Elie then he could stay strong. The author wrote Elie’s father and Stein their relative from Antwerp would often give a portion of their bread to Elie so that he could stay strong so he wouldn’t be weak and targeted faster (44). This demonstrates that if Elie didn’t get any help from his father or Stein he would have died of weakness or killed by the Nazis because he wasn’t able to do work. I can compare this to the movie Jakob the Liar where Jakob gave most of his food to the little girl that he was hiding in his attic when he was in the ghetto. Based on what I read the Jews stayed
After a brief stay at Auschwitz, they are moved to a new camp, Buna. At Buna, Elie goes through the dehumanizing process of the concentration camps. Both he and his father experience severe beatings at the hand of the kapos. All the prisoners are overworked and undernourished. Many lose faith in God, including Elie. He witnesses several hangings, one of a boy with an angelic face, and sees him struggle for over thirty minutes fighting for his life. To a stranger's cry of "Where is God now?", Elie answers: "He is hanging here on this gallows...." (p. 62). As Elie witnesses the hanging of the young pipel, he feels that it is his God who is hanging on the gallows. Elie i...
“In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone,” (110). For example, one of the prisoners murders his father for a ration of his bread; thus, demonstrating a breakdown in humanity. Terrified that he might resort to this level of violence, Elie clings to his father—and in a sense, his innocence and humanity. Yet, since his father’s death, “nothing matters” (113) to Ellie anymore. He—arguably—loses his will to survive, his ability to feel emotion. This proves that compassion is necessary in the plight of
Elie’s father sacrificed his bread ration as a result of giving it to Elie. Elie’s father recognized his son’s hunger and desperation for food, and choose to put aside his own to ease his son’s. “I was dreadfully hungry and swallowed my ration on the spot… and seeing… that there was nothing left of my ration, he did not even begin his own. “Personally, I’m not hungry,” he said” (Wiesel 29). Elie’s father also exhibited empathy to a Jew named Meir Katz, during the ride to Buchenwald. Meir Katz had pried an unknown attacker off of Elie during the night, and the next day seemed to give up hope. “ “Chlomo, I’m getting weak. I’m losing my strength . i can’t hold on…”(Wiesel 68). Nevertheless, Elie’s father tried to revitalize Meir Katz’s dying hope. “ “Don’t let yourself go under… You must resist. Don’t lose faith in yourself.” ” (Wiesel 68). Elie’s father demonstrated kindness in attempting to motivate Meir Katz, and proffering his bread ration to
At the end of the memoir, Elie no longer recognizes himself as he has been mentally and physically changed by the Nazis and holocaust. Throughout the events of moving from camp to camp, losing loved ones, and witnessing the death of his people, Elie loses his insanity. The concentration camp had made a huge impact on him and has scarred him for life. He is no longer the same person he was when he first entered camp. After his father’s death, nothing in his life mattered anymore, but to stay alive. Once he was a free man, Elie doesn’t throw himself at the provisions to seek revenge. He goes seeking “only of bread”(115). Elie knows that even though everything is over, he still has to protect himself and keep himself alive. When Elie contemplates
The literal definition of the word hunger plays a rather large role in the book as well as the figurative definition. The prisoners were not being cared for properly by the prison guards. In addition, the prisoners were separated by physical appearance and age. The ones too old to work were sent to be killed in the gas chambers. The people who were fit to work were sent to be enslaved and work under Natzi rule. They were often so malnourished that they became ill, unable to work, and shot because of their inability to work. For example, during the liberation of Buchenwald, the children were fed nothing over the six day liberation. The poor, desperate children had to eat garbage from the kitchen and grass. They ate grass like common animals. There was a large need for sustainable hunger during the Holocaust.
...read. Again, Mr. Wiesel avoided this by deciding to not even try and fight for any food. Although the worst brutality would be knowingly and willing abandoning family members such as mothers, sisters, fathers, and brothers, any family member for that matter. Yes the prisoners had to survive by themselves, but it may help them live through the pain and fear knowing their family is still alive. It most likely helped Elie because no matter what, he always attempted to stay with his father helping keep at least some humanity. Therefore all of this proves that when forced and thrown into horrible situations with cruel treatment decent human beings can come out being not as decent as they were but they do not become brutes whatsoever.
Food is essential to basic life. It provides people with the energy to think, speak, walk, talk, and breathe. In preparation for the Jews deportation from the ghettos of Transylvania, “the (Jewish) women were busy cooking eggs, roasting meat, and baking cakes”(Wiesel, 13). The Jewish families realized how crucial food was to their lives even before they were faced with the daily condition of famine and death in the concentration camps. The need for food was increased dramatically with the introduction of the famine-like conditions of the camps. Wiesel admitted that, although he was incredibly hungry, he had refused to eat the plate of thick soup they served to the prisoners on the first day of camp because of his nature of being a “spoiled child”. But his attitude changed rapidly as he began to realize that his life span was going to be cut short if he continued to refuse to eat the food they served him. “By the third day, I (Elie Wiesel) was eating any kind of soup hungrily” (Wiesel, 40). His desire to live superseded his social characteristic of being “pampered”. Remarque also uses his characters to show to how a balanced diet promotes a person’s good health. Paul Bäumer uses food to encourage Franz Kemmerich, his sick friend, “eat decently and you’ll soon be well again…Eating is the main thing” (Remarque, 30). Paul Bäumer feels that good food can heal all afflictions. The bread supply of the soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front was severely threatened when the rats became more and more numerous.
Later in the story the SS men refused to give Elie’s father food. “’They didn’t give us anything… They said that we were sick, that we would die soon, and that is would be a waste of food…..I can’t go on…’” Elie’s father was sick so the SS would not feed him, Elie would share his ration with his father in order to keep him alive. Elie soon found out that people were beating his father. “’My son, they are beating me!’ ‘Who?’ I thought he was delirious. ‘Him, the Frenchman…and the pole…They beat me…’” Because Elie’s father was sick he was no longer able to get up in order to relieve himself. This made the other Jews mad and caused them to beat him.
When Elie learns that the dentist has been murdered and his gold crown is safe for another day, his thoughts immediately turn to the possibility that he can trade the gold for food. "The bread, the soup - those were my whole life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time." (Wiesel, 52). As the conditions Elie was subjected to start to take a toll on his body, he becomes less human and more animal. Without basic necessities it was impossible for him to be concerned with maintaining a positive mindset, all that mattered was having a surviving body, not necessarily a surviving soul. When German enemies bombed a nearby area, the concentration camp went on lock down. Two cauldrons of hot soup were left unattended, easily in view of all the prisoners. Elie recounts the event, saying “poor hero committing suicide for a ration or two or more of soup…” (Wiesel, 59). Although everyone knew that the man would be shot for leaving his block, hunger and primal instincts led him to abandon all rational. First and foremost, humans are animals, and animals want to survive. When most freedoms are taken away the focus shifts back to these animalist rationales and we abandon the part of us that makes us human. Once the camp has been liberated, Elie
It sounds strange, but in a way, survival can make you become a fraud or a person to live through something. In ‘Night’, there is an example of corruption in the want and need to survive through the labor camps. For example, Elie taking advice from others who are giving him options on how to survive the camps, but also portraying the advice that is against his morals or different perspective. When Elie was in the hospital after a sac of pus was emptied from the sole of his foot, his bedmate told him to get out of the hospital so that he won’t be replaced by others, and sent to the crematorium. Elie takes a different judgment and assumes that the man is just trying to get rid of