Louis Zamperini's experience of surviving the horrors of captivity provides important perspectives on the limits of human endurance and the moral challenges. Horrific details are displayed that show the hideous truth of Zamperini's imprisonment. In this book, Zamperini's tragedy ties in with challenging questions of fairness and accountability. Also, the questions ask about the roles played by those in charge of Zamperini's and the other prisoners' abuse, and the best way to hold people accountable for their actions during the captivity. Throughout the book, we get a further explanation of the difficulties involved in seeking fairness in these camps by answering these questions: What do you find most horrifying about Louis Zamperini's captivity? …show more content…
To start, I believe that the most horrific aspects of Louis Zamperini's captivity were the awful conditions he lived in and the cruel treatment he received in the camps from the guards. During World War II, the Japanese captured American pilot Louis Zamperini and took him to prisoner camps. Zamperini experienced very difficult situations that he had to encounter in numerous camps. Hillenbrand narrates Zamperini’s horrifying experiences, stating that, “The heat was smothering. Lice hopped over the captives’ skin. Mosquitoes preyed on them in swarms so thick that when Louie snapped his fingers into a fist, then opened his hand, his entire palm was crimson. His diarrhea worsened, becoming bloody” (Hillenbrand 180). These tough conditions, along with Zamperini's declining health as a result of bloody diarrhea, highlight the terrible reality that POWs must fight through. All of these factors increased Zamperini's suffering beyond any human could ever tolerate. Furthermore, Zamperini's captors' brutal treatment of him made his pain even worse. The Japanese guards mistreated Zamperini physically and …show more content…
Should the guards be held responsible? I believe that the prison guards and the main leaders who run the camps, such as Mutsuhiro Watanabe, are responsible for the treatment of the prisoners. People like Watanabe, who handled the treatment of prisoners such as Zamperini, held the majority of the influence for the treatment of the leaders of the prisoner-of-war camps. Their leadership set the tone for the overall atmosphere within the camps, shaping the experiences of the prisoners under their control. Clear evidence showing Watanabe’s unreasonable treatment is when he forced Louis Zamperini to hold a heavy wood plank above his head for a very long time while he was just laughing and sitting there. The task that was handed to Louis Zamperini, that was given to him by Watanabe, was very inhuman and very brutal. This really showed their responsibility for Zamperini and the other prisoners' suffering. Additionally, to make conditions worse for the already miserable inmates, the camp guards were also involved in the abuse of the captives, so they should definitely be held responsible for the prisoners' treatment. The guards in the prisoner-of-war camps were important in causing lots of harm to the prisoners. They frequently used violence and intimidation to keep the prisoners under control. Hillenbrand shows this as she narrates, “Punctuating the passage of each
He uses his rebellion to get through the POW camps. He also used what he learned along the way to help him. Louie really knows he has to believe in himself. Louie Zamperini once said, “I think the hardest thing in life is to forgive. Hate is self destructive. If you hate somebody, you’re not hurting the person you hate, you’re hurting yourself. It’s a healing, actually, it’s a real healing...forgiveness.” (Louie Zamperini.) On July 2nd, 2014, Louie Zamperini died of natural causes, but his message of forgiveness will carry on
Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps during World War Two, including Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Many who were sent to the concentration camps did not survive but those who did tried to either forgot the horrific events that took place or went on to tell their personal experiences to the rest of the world. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi wrote memoirs on their time spent in the camps of Auschwitz; these memoirs are called ‘Night’ and ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. These memoirs contain similarities of what it was like for a Jew to be in a concentration camp but also portray differences in how each endured the daily atrocities of that around them. Similarities between Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi’s memoirs can be seen in the proceedings that
Louis who is not a lone survivor shared his horrendous experiences with Russell Phillips. Together they went through the hardship of surviving not only through a plane crash but also a POW camp. The plane crash leaves him and two other crew members, one of which being Philips, stranded in the pacific on a raft for 40 days with little provisions which could barely last them the night. With occasional rainwater and fish they were able to survive long enough to be found by a Japanese plane. By that time it was too late to save the unknown crew member. Now just only Philips and Zamperini are left both being treated at a Japanese hospital where they will be restored to full health to just be stored into a prisoner of war camp. “…Clubbing him, jamming pen knives under his fingernails, tearing his fingernails off, and applying the water cure…”(Hillenbrand 201). Zamperini was stuck being tortured almost every day until the second nuke dropped on Nagasaki. Both adversities making a tremendous impact on their lives yet they still found a way to cope with it.
The guards began mistreating the prisoners, not physically, but emotionally and psychologically, taking advantage of the power and authority appointed to them by the experimenter (Zimbardo 109). Crimes of obedience and mistreatment of other human beings are not only found in Milgrim’s and Zimbardo’s experiments. In 1968, U.S. troops massacred over 500 villagers in My Lai.
The only thing worse than being taken as a prisoner of war would be being killed in combat. Unfortunately, being taken as prisoner of war in world war two was the fate of many soldiers fighting. Their camps were supposed to be similar to an internment camp created for civilians, as stated by the Geneva Convention in 1929. A prisoner of war camp was supposed to allow the prisoners to write home to their families, get paid for doing non-war related jobs, and captives even got packages from the international Red Cross. While the camps were not made to be a five star hotel, the camps treated their captives well enough that they could live comfortably. In Japan, this was not the case. As explained in Unbroken, a biography about Louis Zamperini,
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...
Isolated and alone, many attempts from both sides, America and Japan, to force the feeling of invisibility on their POWs or Japanese-American internees. Separated from friends, denied human rights and on the brink of starvation demolishing their dignity. Louie Zamperini was a POW who was originally an Olympian athlete. He was taken captive by Japan while laying raft for over a month. Miné is a Japanese-American intern who had been condemned to an intern camp during World War Two. The experience that Louie and Miné have undergone are those that challenge the two in a very psychological way. However, they have recovered showing their resilience and how humans can recover even from scarring events.
Even when US troops liberated the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, the stories still never made it to the front page of the paper and people still did not believe in the reliability of the stories (Leff 52). In 1943, a survey w...
Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz is a vivid and eloquent memoir of a Holocaust survivor from the largest concentration camp under German control in World War II. The original title in Italian is Se questo e un uomo, which translate to If This is A Man, alluding to the theme of humanity. The overall tone is calm and observational; rather than to pursue the reader, it is “to furnish documentation for a quiet study if certain aspects of the human mind” (Levi 10). The memoir is a testimony of Levi and the other prisoners’ survival at the Nazis’ systematic destruction attempts at the prisoners’ humanity. It was a personal struggle for prisoners, for individual survival, and struggle to maintain their humanity.
(p. viii). Even though he wanted his story to be known, he knows that nobody could ever possibly fully feel what he, or anyone else, went through in Auschwitz. “Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was. Others will never know that. But could they at least understand?”
Political prisoners and criminals alike were subject to brutal conditions in the Soviet gulags at Kolyma in the 20th century. In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, the stories of many different prisoners are told and much is revealed about how humans react under these pressures, both naturally and socially. Being in an extreme environment not only takes a toll on one’s physical well-being, but on one’s mental and emotional state as well. The stories show that humans can be reduced to a fragile, animalistic state while in the Kolyma work camps because the extreme conditions force many men to focus solely on self-preservation.
A crucial concept developed throughout Survival in Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved is the process of “the demolition of a man” through useless acts of violence. In order for the Nazis to control and murder without regard or guilt, they had to diminish men into subhumans. Those who entered the camps were stripped of their dignity and humanity, devoid of any personal identity. Men and women were reduced to numbers in a system that required absolute submission, which placed them in an environment where they had to struggle to survive and were pitted against their fellow prisoners. The purpose of the camps were not merely a place for physical extermination, but a mental one as well. Primo Levi exposes these small and large acts of deprivation and destruction within his two texts in order for readers to become aware of the affects such a system has on human beings, as well as the danger unleashed by a totalitarian system.
“If one speaks about torture, one must take care not to exaggerate,” Jean Améry view of torture comes from a place of uneasiness (22). He discusses in his book At The Mind’s Limits, about the torture that he underwent while a prisoner in Auschwitz. In his chapter titled “Torture”, he goes into deep description of not only the torture he endured, but also how that torture never leaves a person. Améry goes to great lengths to make sure that the torture he speaks of is accurate and as he says on page 22, not exaggerated.
In his book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski shows how the conditions and situations that the prisoners were put through made them make a choice that most humans never face. The choice of compassion and concern for ones fellow man or only loving and caring for one’s self. This may sound harsh people, but after seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling the things they did in camp, it was the only way to survive physically and mentally. The narrator in the book makes the decision numerous times and suffers from these choices as he
If This Is a Man or Survival in Auschwitz), stops to exist; the meanings and applications of words such as “good,” “evil,” “just,” and “unjust” begin to merge and the differences between these opposites turn vague. Continued existence in Auschwitz demanded abolition of one’s self-respect and human dignity. Vulnerability to unending dehumanization certainly directs one to be dehumanized, thrusting one to resort to mental, physical, and social adaptation to be able to preserve one’s life and personality. It is in this adaptation that the line distinguishing right and wrong starts to deform. Primo Levi, a survivor, gives account of his incarceration in the Monowitz- Buna concentration camp.