The painting, “Unable to Work” by David Olere in 1944, shows a families expressions as they first walk into a concentration camp. We see a family of two adults, a girl, and two young boys exhausted from their travels, entering the camp. Unlike the rest of the scenery, this family is dressed in light colorful clothes while everyone else depicted in the background are in black, making the painting very moody and dark. We also see death encompassing the family, chimneys and an SS soldier holding a gun to the family. Overall the workers, death, and the selection foreshadow the effects of the concentration camp on the lives of the people. The selection, the test determining whether you live or die, is depicted in the painting via the chimneys in the background and the people walking towards the …show more content…
chimneys. This is also a prominent part of the book Night: “No. Two steps from the pit, we were ordered to turn left and herded into the barracks. (34)” This is relatable because this is the very same test Eliezer and his father passed when they first entered the camp and were ultimately not sent to the crematorium. Another relatable idea depicted in the painting and in the book is the idea of death.
We see in the book how if you are unable to work, you die, “Behind me, an old man fell to the ground. Nearby, an SS man replaced his revolver in its holster (30)” and we see in the painting that the elderly woman has the hand of death on her showing that she is told old to work, therefore leading to her inevitable death. This previous quote means that the old man was too weak to work, so he was therefore shot and killed on the spot which sends the message that only those strong enough to work will live, unlike the elderly lady who is too weak. Finally, the workers in the painting represent the hardships that the prisoners had to endure if they were not sent to the crematorium. For Elie and his father, that means that they have “to work in a warehouse of electrical materials (49).” Even though Elie and his father fell into a good “Kommando”, they still had to deal with their rageful boss, Idek who took his anger out on his workers in the shape of beatings, especially Elie. Throughout the painting, we see how many key parts of Olere’s painting was relatable to the book Night by Elie
Wiesel.
There are unexpected aspects of life in the camp depicted in “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlement” by Tadeusz Borowski. The prisoners were able to make very obvious improvements to their lived in the camp, without reaction by the SS officers; the market was even made with the support of the camp. The prisoners actually hoped for a transport of prisoners, so as to gain some supplies. The true nature of the camp is never forgotten, even in better moments at the camp.
... chance of survival. I have dispersed dead leaves over the battlefield, so it symbolizes withering and coming to an end. The plants are dead and this usually occurs during the cold winter months. This also explains why people would have gotten ill and died. The soldiers represented the Nazis power at the time. The interior is covered with red paint around the camp. The red paint represents blood and it is smeared in random places, so this means that death was everywhere and consistent. A huge significant symbol is the sunflower between the two worlds. Half the flower is a bright yellow and the other side is pure black with traces of blood. This flower juxtaposes the two scenes. The left side seems to be more elegant and peaceful. On the other side, the concentration camp looks more dangerous and deadly. These are the presentation technique that I have incorporated.
The choices that Elie made, seemed to be the right decisions. “Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium. Work or crematorium--the choice is yours.”
Samuels starts out explaining the background of Elie, a child who has a great love for religion. Then, Nazis come and occupy his native town of Sighet. Although held captured and clueless to where they were going, the Jews were indeed optimistic. They had no reason not to be, the Nazis were treating them as they were of importance. However, the optimism was to come to a halt. After arresting the Jewish leader, the Jews were sent to ghettos, then into camps. It wasn't until they reached Auschwitz where Elie for the first time smelt burning flesh. Then the eight words that Elie couldn't forget, "Men to the left! Women to the right!" He was then left with his father, who for the whole trip he would depend on to survive. It was this, in which made him lose his religiousness. In the months to come Elie and his father lived like animals. Tragically, in the end his father past away, and to amazement Elie had not wept. Samuels did an overall remarkable job on this review; however, there were still some parts that could have been improved.
In the painting from document B, it reveals what the lodging looked like, the state of our clothing and shoes, and the health that most of the soldiers were experiencing. We have had to deal with, “poor food- hard lodging- cold weather- fatigue, “(Document B). In this diary by Dr Waldo, a doctor we have at camp, he has accurately described what life is like at camp. The factors that we undergo make us sick both physically and mentally, these factors make us lose all sense of empowerment to win this war that we once felt, these factors make us want to go home more than anything just to hear our mother’s voice just once more.
Imagery is one of the most effective methods Wiesel used in his biography to portray forms of inhumanity. “Not far from us, flames, huge flames were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there… small children. Babies” (32). In this case, Elie does not wish to live if his eyes were telling the truth. This alone refers to extreme cruelty, describing the inhumanity in which the suppressed races endured inside the many concentration camps. Following several weeks at work in an electrical-fittings factory, Elie quotes a hanging which he remembers quite well. “He was a young boy from Warsaw… The Lagerälteste
It is almost unimaginable the difficulties victims of the holocaust faced in concentration camps. For starters they were abducted from their homes and shipped to concentration camps in tightly packed cattle cars. Once they made it to a camp, a selection process occurred. The males were separated from the females. Then those who were too young or too old to work were sent to the showers. Once the showers were tightly packed, the Nazi’s would turn on the water and drop in canisters of chemicals that would react with the water and release a deadly gas. Within minutes, everyone in the shower would be dead. The bodies would be hauled out and burned. Those who were not selected to die didn’t fair much better. Terrible living conditions, forced labor, malnourishment, and physical abuse were just a few of the things they had to endure. It was such a dark time. So many invaluable lessons can be learned from the holocaust and from those who survived it. One theme present in Elie Wiesel’s novel Night and Robert Benigni’s film Life is Beautiful is that family can strengthen or hinder one during adversity.
Lastly, Elie’s father dies just before the Jews are liberated and Elie sees his reflection in the mirror but does not recognize himself because he looks like a skeleton. The first way in which one can see the theme of inhumanity is through discrimination. This is when someone is treating other people badly based on his or her category instead of her character. For example, the officials beat the Jews in the ghetto mercilessly just because they are ordered to and because they are Jewish. In the morning of their last day in the ghetto the Jews are told to leave and “the Hungarian police used their rifle butts, [and] their clubs to indiscriminately strike old men and women, children and cripples” (16)....
Art has a hard time dealing with the feeling that no matter what he accomplishes it will never equal the fact his parents survived Auschwitz. Pavel tries to explain to Art that he should not feel guilt for not being there, because that is not his fault. Art struggle with this feeling throughout the book. The feeling that his mother and father did this great thing by surviving, but the truth of it is they were just the lucky. In the camps the killing was random and either one could have been killed at any minute, so the truth is they just got lucky to make it through.
Elie and his father are separated from Elie’s mother and little sister, never to be seen again. Elie comes face to face with the Angel of Death as he is marched to the edge of a crematory, but is put in a barracks instead. Elie’s faith briefly faltered at this moment. They are forced to strip down, but to keep their belt and shoes. They run to the barber and get their hair clipped off and any body hair shaved. Many of the Jews rejoice to see the others that have made it. Others weep for the ones lost. They then get prison clothes that were ridiculously fitted. They made exchanges and went to a new barracks in the “gypsies’ camp.” They wait in the mud for a long time. They were permitted to another barracks, with a gypsy in charge of them. They are ...
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
Gesensway, Deborah and Mindy Roseman. Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps. London: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Primo Levi’s narrative of the Holocaust explains the true struggle and chance for survival for the Jews in camps, specifically Auschwitz. Separately, Levi describes the true chance people had for survival in that they could have been selected to or in some cases boarded alone either the train car going to work or the train car going straight to the gas chambers. This is similar to the bombing of Hiroshima where some people could have been in the city, such as Saeki visiting her mother in which she could have died, or Kuribayashi being lucky enough in the distance away from the city. As Levi worked in the concentration camp of Auschwitz, he describes the struggle and dehumanization Jews had to go through to survive including tattooed numbers on their arms which labelled them, prisoners stealing soup or shoes to keep going. The major difference between the Hiroshima bombing and the Holocaust was the torture before an end versus an end before a torture. The Holocaust was either a two-minute torture in a gas
This one shows the Jews looking up and out of the window at a Nazi flag with a swastika. Visual and literal elements are profoundly detailed in panel 4. First of all, the text illustrates the theme of death by the Nazis by saying, "Hanging high in the center of town, it was a Nazi flag." It almost seems as if the Nazi flag is a central menace, suggesting that it symbolizes death while being completely dominant. Next, the extreme size of the panel shows emphasis on its content - that the panel is important, and that the reader should focus on it. In addition, the positioning of the visual parts in panel 4 suggests future events. The Nazi flag is shown to be higher than all of the Jews, almost like a tower among small buildings. The Jews in the train are looking up to the flag in a way that they would look up at something superior. The drawing in the panel expresses the future superiority of the Germans over the Jews. It also fully expresses the theme of human interdependence, death, and chance by showing the few Jews collected together. All of them, collectively, are looking up at the Nazi flag, which symbolizes interdependence. Death and chance are also implemented by the small number of Jews depicted, because many Jews lost their lives in the Holocaust by
It's horrible to think how quickly a person can lose their sense of humanity. This struggle with humanity throughout Night, is the main idea that makes this book so powerful and heartbreaking. The thought that so many people can be slaughtered like cattle, and thrown away like garbage is unbelievable. Throughout the book, Elie’s alias, Eliezer, is forced to witness some of the most horrific and inhumanly cruel acts that the world has ever seen. From seeing truckloads of babies dumped into a pit of fire, to watching his own father beaten over and over within an inch of his life.