Joshua Sobol’s Ghetto provides the narrative of a thriving theatre set in the Vilna ghetto amidst the Second World War. After being devised in 1983, Ghetto established a commotion as the work questions “or flatly contradicts many received images of Jews and Jewish life in the ghettos” (Bern 2004, p. 6) during that period of time. Our adaptation of the piece confronted the class with a vast amount of theatrical decisions in how we are able to stage a production about factual occurrences that will respectfully represent Sobol’s work with the effort it deserves, rather than trivializing the atrocity that Jewish individuals were subjected too.
Situated amidst the more tragic days of the Holocaust during 1941 to 1943 in the Jewish ghetto of Vilna, Lithuania, Sobol’s play depicts a narrative of the “unlikely flourishing of a theatre at the very time the Nazi’s began their policy of mass extermination” (Yordon 2009, p. 372). Devised in 1983 and premiering that year in Israel, Sobol combined non-fiction with fiction, incorporating characters inspired by real historical figures and factual events immersed with theatrical elements to produce a
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372). Dramatizing the atrocity that was Holocaust doesn’t come without issues arising in representing the Jewish culture and brutal events respectfully and tastefully which has implicated multiple decisions in staging and performing this piece. Falling between that of stereotypical clichés and proper representation when given the direction to overact holds difficult choices in how to perform my character, and having historical events as the basis of the play leaves us creating theatrical decisions such as symbolic movements from the selection scene to emphasize rather than
Since the publication of, Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the holocaust has been deemed one of the darkest times in humanity, from the eradication of Jewish people to killing of innocents. Wiesel was one of the Jewish people to be in the holocaust and from his experience he gave us a memoir that manages to capture the dark side of human nature in the holocaust. He demonstrates the dark side of human nature through the cruelty the guards treat the Jews and how the Jews became cold hearted to each other. Wiesel uses foreshadowing and imagery, and metaphors to describe these events.
Wiesel recounts the cramped living conditions, the Jewish life and the design and purpose of the Sighet ghettos from its conception to its liquidation. His recount demonstrates the hardships and the dehumanization experienced by the Jewish people starting with their isolation and containment within the
In the years after the Holocaust the survivors from the concentration camps tried to cope with the horrors of the camps and what they went through and their children tried to understand not only what happened to their parents. In the story of Maus, these horrors are written down by the son of a Holocaust survivor, Vladek. Maus is not only a story of the horrors of the concentration camps, but of a son, Artie, working through his issues with his father, Vladek. These issues are shown from beginning to end and in many instances show the complexity of the father-son relationship that was affected from the Holocaust. Maus not only shows these matters of contentions, but that the Holocaust survivors constantly put their children’s experiences to unreasonable standards of the parent’s Holocaust experiences.
When Abraham Sutzkever wrote “How?” in February 1943, he was only seven months from his own freedom, yet the ghetto itself was still one year and five months from emancipation. Yet his portrayal of “the day of Liberation” appears very similar to a day in the Nazi ghettos, where time is extended through pain, devastation, and fear. The only difference felt is the frustration of their memories and their powerlessness to proceed past the hatred and pain that were connected to the deaths of thousands, both literally and figuratively. These dark memories are not forgotten by time, and his imagined survival of the Jews appears bleak and tedious; the pain and gloom of their experiences overshadowing their hopeful freedom in the future.
Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl describes how the hellish, cold, and inescapable setting of a march toward a Nazi concentration camp as well as the cesspool itself degrade its victims to a point of not spiritual, communal resistance but pure hopelessness and moral corruption. The story juxtaposes two Jewish captives in order to view the different effects the setting has on their humanity, or the coalescence of one’s compassion and human value; Rosa, the self-sacrificing mother of Magda, is considered the protagonist while Stella, Rosa’s envious niece, the antagonist. In their interactions with the baby Magda, Ozick frequently characterizes Rosa as humane and loving while Stella as ravenous and cold-hearted, invoking the idea that, through her love,
A story of a young boy and his father as they are stolen from their home in Transylvania and taken through the most brutal event in human history describes the setting. This boy not only survived the tragedy, but went on to produce literature, in order to better educate society on the truth of the Holocaust. In Night, the author, Elie Wiesel, uses imagery, diction, and foreshadowing to describe and define the inhumanity he experienced during the Holocaust.
While comparing both texts: Auschwitz – The Blueprint of Genocide and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, we find that both texts succeeded to win the audience’s sympathy for the millions of Jews that were mercilessly killed. Both texts use various conventions to achieve this and also to position the audience. Although the feature film was more so successful than the documentary as film presented the topic in a more entertaining manner unlike the documentary where it was all the facts and details of the Holocaust and more or less boring.
“Maus” weaves through the past and present to tell the story of Holocaust survivors Vladek and Anja Spiegelman as well as how Art, their son, dealt with the repercussions of his father’s experiences. The author, Art Spiegelman, wrote “Maus” in comic form and portrayed Jews as mice, Poles as pigs, and Germans as cats. “Maus Ⅰ” begins in mid-1930’s Poland with his soon to be wed parents and concludes with them at the gates of Auschwitz in the winter of 1944. In “Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History”, by Art Spiegelman, the characters of Vladek and Art both struggle, although differently, to cope with their own blameworthiness, which demonstrates the power that guilt can hold over an individual’s life.
In Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the audience is led through a very emotional story of a Holocaust survivor’s life and the present day consequences that the event has placed on his relationship with the author, who is his son, and his wife. Throughout this novel, the audience constantly is reminded of how horrific the Holocaust was to the Jewish people. Nevertheless, the novel finds very effective ways to insert forms of humor in the inner story and outer story of Maus. Although the Holocaust has a heart wrenching effect on the novel as a whole, the effective use of humor allows for the story to become slightly less severe and a more tolerable read.
Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Bastards entails a Jewish revenge fantasy that is told through a counterfactual history of events in World War II. However, this story follows a completely different plot than what we are currently familiar with. Within these circumstances, audiences now question the very ideas and arguments that are often associated with World War II. We believe that Inglourious Basterds is a Jewish revenge fantasy that forces us to rethink our previous understandings by disrupting the viewers sense of content and nature in the history of World War II. Within this thesis, this paper will cover the Jewish lens vs. American lens, counter-plots within the film, ignored social undercurrents, and the idea that nobody wins in war.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. Van Pelt. Holocaust: a History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, by John Boyne, significantly distorts the truth of the Holocaust in order to evoke the empathy of the audience. This response is accomplished by the author through hyperbolizing the innocence of the nine-year old protagonist, Bruno. Through the use of dramatic irony, Boyne is able to both engage and involve the audience in the events of the novel. Although it is highly improbable that a son of a German high-ranking Schutzstaffel (SS) officer would not know what a Jew is and would be unable to pronounce both Fuhrer and Auschwitz, (which he instead mispronounces as ‘Fury’ and ‘Out-with’ respectively, both of which are intentional emotive puns placed by the author to emphasize the atrocity of the events), the attribution of such information demonstrates the exaggerated innocence of Bruno and allows the audience to know and understand more than him. This permits the readers to perceive a sense of involvement, thus, allowing the audience to be subjected towards feeling more dynamic and vigorous evocation of emotions and empathy towards the characters. Fu...
Strangeways, Al. "'The Boot in the Face': The Problem of the Holocaust in the Poetry of