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Effect of the Holocaust
Holocaust lasting effect on society
Effect of the Holocaust
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Gerda Weissman Klein is the strong protagonist and eloquent author of All But My Life. Gerda came from a loving traditional family and home, which was all taken from her during the war. Although Gerda faced many hardships and death, her faith and dreams of home stuck with her throughout the war. Gerda's life and outlook on life itself were influenced by the Holocaust as mush as she influenced those around her. Her never-wavering faith in liberation and her creative personality lifted spirits and helped gather friends over the six-year war. "There is a watch lying on the green carpet of the living room of my childhood. The hands seem to stand motionless at 9:10, freezing time when it happened"(Klein, pg.3). In some ways, time did stop for fifteen-year-old Gerda. She never got the chance to live a normal teenage life. This left a rather large gap in her social development and slowed her emotional growth. In more ways than one, Gerda was more of a fifteen-year-old girl than a twenty-one-year-old woman on liberation day. An example of this would be her early relationship with Kurt Klein. At one point she thought to herself that she was afraid Kurt would attempt to kiss her. She …show more content…
As her family members were lost one by one, she learned to be self-reliant and her resolute spirit shined through. She remained optimistic during the Holocaust and still found ways to thank God for the good things in her life, up until the march to Czechoslovakia. Gerda's optimism allowed her memoir to be a tale of love against the background of war rather than a tale of endless suffering. Gerda also believed that it was important to recognize the goodness of her peers. This showed that Gerda was an unselfish character. Her playwriting was a small example of her selflessness as well. Not only did writing distract Gerda from the world around her, it distracted her peers and for a short while, brought them joy and
Riva’s artistic side helped her go through the Holocaust with at least some entertainment. Riva’s specialty was poetry; poetry even saved her life when she was sent to a hospital because she needed to be kept alive for her poetry. Riva’s poetry helped the girl’s morale that made them want to work hard, so they can get out of the labor camp. This artistic trait made Riva unique and made her stand out from the rest of the girls in her camps.
During the Holocaust six million Jews lost their lives, while others lost their friends, family and dignity. Helen Waterford discusses her survival in the novel Parallel Journeys . Through Helen Waterford’s journey to hide, survive, and rejoin society, she realizes that she cannot dwell on what has happened to her but learn and become wise from what she has endured.
Erin George’s A Woman Doing Life: Notes from a Prison for Women sheds light on her life at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women (FCCW) where she was sentenced for the rest of her life for first-degree murder. It is one of the few books that take the reader on a journey of a lifer, from the day of sentencing to the day of hoping to being bunked adjacent to her best friend in the geriatric ward.
While reading “The Ordinary Life” by Barbara Crooker, one is able to understand the dramatic irony of the poem and the irony of her ordinary day being rather interesting. In the first line, Crooker states that nothing happened that day, however she later goes on to contradict herself. When reading the poem, one can see her describe a day full of activities, such as: cleaning the cupboards, taking care of her baby, making dinner for her family, and a few other pastimes. Additionally, Crooker uses strong descriptive language to illustrate what the mother sees as an unremarkable day. For instance, “[...] sat in a circle of sunlight,” (line 9) and “[...] a long slow kiss, tasting of coffee and cream,” (lines 26-27) show the depth of her awareness
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness,” Desmond Tutu once said (“Desmond Tutu Quotes”). During the Holocaust, the Jews were treated very badly but some managed to stay hopeful through this horrible time. The book Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer shows how Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck who had two very different stories but managed to stay hopeful. Helen was a Jew who went into hiding for awhile before being taken away from her family and being sent to a concentration camp. Alfons was a member of the Hitler Youth where he became the youngest member of the German air force. To him, Hitler was everything and he would die any day for him and his country. As for Helen, Hitler was the man ruining her life. The Holocaust was horrible to live through but some managed to survive because of the hope they contained.
In The book Devil in Vienna, by Doris Orgel, Inge a young, intelligent Jewish girl is faced with the same types of problems. Being Jewish at that time was no small problem. Instead of worrying what to wear the next day, she would have to worry about whether or not her family would be safe or taken to a concentration camp. Inge not only had to face the problem of keeping her family together, she had to find a way to maintain a friendship with her best friend Lieselotte. Lieselotte’s father was a Nazi and forbade her to keep any contact with Inge, but the two girls would always find a way to see or write to each other even when things were rough. Inges father also began to disprove of their friendship and pretty soon if either one were to mention the other’s name she would be punished. Yet the girls refused to forget each other. One day Inge received the news. She was to move away to Yugoslavia to escape Hitler’s regime. The girls promised to never forget each other and they never did; even long after the war was over.
Using the murder of Dee Ann’s mother as a means to intertwine the lives of the characters together, Steve Yarbrough examines the nature of relationships in “The Rest of Her Life.” The relationships in the story take a turn after Dee Ann’s mother is killed, with characters seeking to act more on their own, creating distance between many relationships throughout the story. Independent lifestyles prevent emotional bonds that hold relationships together from forming, thus preventing the characters from maintaining healthy relationships. The dysfunctional relationship present between Dee Ann and Chuckie in “The Rest of Her Life” is the result of the characters ' desire for self-gratification.
Anne Frank, Jeanne Wakatsuki and Elie Wiesel all are greatly affected by the war, but in different milieus and in different scenarios. Anne Frank was a 13-year-old Jewish girl who was thrown into one of the worst periods in the history of the world: the Holocaust. Though she went through awful things that many people will never experience, she always kept the faith that there was still some good in everyone. She once said, “Despite everything, I still believe people are truly good at heart.” Her diary, which she kept while her family was in hiding from the Nazis, shows the triumph of her spirit over the evil in the world even through the pain of adolescence.
The book A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman is a very successful narrative about Vladek’s experience during the Holocaust. It tells the story of a Jewish holocaust survivor and his son who is a cartoonist transforming his father’s tale into a comic book. The son, Art, finds this event horrifying but also interesting so he feels others should read about it from the mouth of an actual survivor. The story jumps back and forth from present day to the days of the war. Art visits his father continuously to record parts of his story but he does not have a well-developed relationship with his father so these visits get tense. The father, Vladek, starts the story by saying how he met Art’s mother, Anja, who also survived the Holocaust, but she later committed suicide in May, 1968. Most of the story is the contact between Art and Vladek; Anja’s death is a major part of their relationship. It may be why they do not have an upright relationship. They have different ideas of Anja. For Vladek, Anja is the perfect wife; she was neat, wealthy, bright, and fluent in many languages like Vladek, whose own language fluency saves him in many situations. For Art, Anja is a needy and emotional mother but also the most compassionate towards him. We never get her side of the story, especially because after she commits suicide, Vladek destroys her diaries being unable to tolerate any image of Anja. In addition to the mother’s tragedy, Art has a brother, Richieu, who was born before the war in which he never meets. His mother’s sister, Tosha, took Richieu to stay with a relative to keep him far from the camps. The Germans eventually arrive in town and take the Jews to the camps so Tosha commits suicide and poisons Richieu, along with her own children. For ...
It reveals that Louie is trying hard to become a better person and excel in life.
Grief Girl is a novel written by Erin Vincent about her and her sibling’s experience of losing both their mother and father. Vincent was only fourteen years old at the time of her parents’ death. The chapter goes into detail about the events of the night of Vincent’s parents’ death. Based on the chapter, I can conclude that Vincent definitely went through at least two of the stages of grief. The fact that the novel is nonfiction helps me connect with the emotions that Vincent felt that day. Her details are extremely vivid and it is recognizable that Vincent recalls the events from that day very well.
Although our past is a part of who we are nowadays, we will never be happy if we can never let go of the painful feeling attached to our suffering. In addition, “suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us” (Wiesel 96). We should not be afraid to let go of our haunting past and grow closer to others because “man carries his fiercest enemy within himself. Hell isn’t others. It’s ourselves” (Wiesel 15). The wise advice this book gives its audience is one reason it won a Nobel Peace Prize. The books are also part of a very famous Holocaust trilogy, which is one reason it has been so widely read. In addition, it blends everyday stories with Holocaust stories.Therefore, readers are very compassionate towards the narrator and readers create a bond with this character due to his hardships and the similarities he shares with us. Lastly, Day speaks to the needs of the human spirit by intertwining a love story. Readers wonder if his girlfriend will change his attitude towards life because he tells the doctor, “I love Kathleen. I love her with all my heart. And how can one love if at the same time one doesn’t care about life” (Wiesel
Samuel Smiles, a Scottish author and government reformer, once stated, “Hope… is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.” Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor, saw hope in people and her future of surviving. The theme in Gerda Weissmann Klein’s All But My Life illustrates how one can stay hopeful in a world full of mistreatment through the use of figurative language, internal monologue, and dialogue.
“My mind was so dull, my nerves so worn from waiting, that only an emotionless vacuum remained” (213). Gerda Weissman Klein was one of the few fortunate Jews to survive the Holocaust and tell her story. She explains her tragic story through her own her memoir called “All But My Life”. Gerda made it through the Holocaust because of her loving family, loyal friends, and intuition of her own.
To conclude, the poem by Carol Duffy's goal is to remember the tragically events of the Holocaust through the dramatic monologue of a woman that was a prisoner in a concentrate camp during the Holocaust. The author uses obscene imagery and other devices to portray the abuses that the soldiers caused to their victim, so that the public will evolve feelings of hate towards them.