Critical Assessement of Oberfeldwebel Beckstadt by Craig Raine
Set in the 1940's after the war 'Oberfeldwebel Beckstadt' is a poem
about a Soldier returning home as the war has ended. I know this as
Craig Raine states 'It is the end of the war' He reflects on the
appearance of the war scene and the horrible events he has taken part
in. Craig Raine has used a third person view to narrate the scenes
which is an advantage as all events around him are identified and
clearly described . This poem explores aspects of war . The poem
reflects the negative issues throughout the poem.
Craig Raine uses various techniques to express different ideas. There
are a number of different scenes described in the poem. The change of
scenes such as 'slop petrol from two jerry cans' to ' how the Jews
were like sheep' gives us an idea of the wide range of incidents which
have been caused by the war and how one event leads to the other.
There is a link between the dead bodies and the treatment of the Jews
as the Dead bodies are assumed as the Jews - the victims of this war.
The first paragraphs are the first scene, they represent the images of
destruction. 'like an injured battleship' this simile creates an image
of a destroyed ship at sea, smoke and scattered debris. This is the
final outcome of war, nothing good has come of it, people have
suffered. 'camp is a crown of thorns' gives an image of the camp
surrounded by barb wire. This is where victims have suffered. This is
a good comparison made by Craig Raine as the 'crown of thorns' can
refer to the one Jesus wore when being crucified which also refers to
suffering. The weapons used for the killings are disarmed as they are
not needed anymore, 'Oberfeldwebel Beckstadt unscrews his silencer'.
The awful events of suffering are deliberately forgot about as the try
to discard any evidence, ' slop petrol from two jerry cans over the
bodies'.
process of the war and most of them were never even buried at home (Zuehlke 50).
“Jews, listen to me! I see fire! There are huge flames! It is a furnace,” Madame Schachter imagined fire, the fire that would burn millions of Jews, gays, and disabled people. Many people died in crematory ovens during the Holocaust. The people who are responsible for the Holocaust are the minor Nazi soldiers because they didn’t question decisions, they ultimately pulled the trigger, and they separated families.
In March 11, 1900 in a German town called Konitz the severed body parts of a human were discovered. Almost immediately, the blame fell on the Jewish. As Smith points out, anti-Semitism had been on a steady decline, and the anti-Semitics were looking for ways to revitalize the movement. The murder was an opportunity for anti-Semitics revive their movement. After the identity of the body was discovered to be Ernst Winter, the Staatsburgerzeitung, an anti-Semitic newspaper, printed several articles focusing on Konitz. Using unverified accounts from people in the town, it claimed that the murder was a ritual murder that had been carried out by the Jewish. The use of fear mongering was affective because the paper was a Berlin based paper so distribution was wide, and news of the murder traveled far. A crucial facet of the rise of anti-Semitism was due to anti-Semitic newspapers taking stories such as the Ernst Winter murder and using them to promote their cause. One of Smith’s sources, the Preuβische Jahrbṻcher, had a printed article written by Heinrich von Treitschke who was an historian; in which one of his quotes was “The Jews are our misfortune.” His article was what later spurred the German population’s turn from liberalism a...
I am analyzing a picture of a mass shooting at some concentration camp. A deep trench full of dead bodies with weeping Jews kneeled down yelling while being shot in the back of the head to fall down to rest with their dead brethren . The solders look fearless while firing into the crowd, holding there gun high with no second thoughts. The dead bodies of Jews are effortlessly slumped in the mud-infested trench with nothing but the jumpsuit-like clothes gifted to them at the concentration camp and the Star of David to stay with them at an everlasting pit of death.
The game is tied, there are only three seconds left on the clock, and they have a mere ten yards left to score. The players look to the quarterback as he runs onto the field with the final play of the game. It is times like these that most people look for a leader to lead them to victory. However not all leaders are on the field. Throughout history there have been many leaders and they all share some of the same qualities. Those qualities are bravery, experienced, and dedicated. Without these qualities those leaders would been ineffective.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
"Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. University of South Florida, 1 Jan. 1997. Web. 19 May 2014. .
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.
For many years, people time and time again denied the happenings of the Holocaust or partially understood what was happening. Even in today’s world, when one hears the word ‘Holocaust’, they immediately picture the Nazi’s persecution upon millions of innocent Jews, but this is not entirely correct. This is because Jews
- human and Jews so a picture is put into their heads that they are
First of all, to get a proper understanding of the events in my book, I did some research to paint a picture of the holocaust. The reason that the Germans started the holocaust a long time ago was because they believed that the Jewish people were minions of the devil, and that they were bent on destroying the Christian mind. Many Christians in Germany were also mad at them for killing Jesus in the Bible. Throughout the holocaust, Hitler, the leader of Germany at the time, and the Nazis killed about six million Jewish people, more than two-thirds of all of the Jewish people in Europe at the time. They also killed people who were racially inferior, such as people of Jehovah's Witness religion, and even some Germans that had physical and mental handicaps. The concentration camp that appears in this story is Auschwitz, which was three camps in one: a prison camp, and extermination camp, and a slave labor camp. When someone was sent to Auschw...
The Jews were used as scapegoats by the Germans. They were treated terribly and lived in very poor conditions. Many of the Jewish children were put into homes,ther...
During the war jewish families were forced to abandon their homes and all their possessions, and eventually they even lose their humanity and grips on life.
The film concludes with a statement, "In memory of the more than six million Jews murdered", the closing credits begin with a view of a road paved with headstones culled from Jewish cemeteries during the war (as depicted in the film), before fading to black.
This is an example of the treatment of Jews at the time. It is very