The critically acclaimed film The Shop on Main Street (1965), originally a novel written by Ladislav Grosman, is a crucial form of media in understanding the exploitation of ordinary citizens by the Nazi party. The film tells the tale of the aryanization of Sabinov, a small Slovakian town, in the midst of the uprise of the Nazi party. The protagonist, Tóno Brtko, is assigned “Aryan manager” by his brother, a high ranking Nazi official, for a Jewish owned shop in the town square. When his brother gives him this position Tóno was promised riches beyond his wildest dream; however, when he arrives he finds the shop is run by a senile, near deaf Jewish woman, Rozália Lautmannová, and the shop is dependent on donations. He, unlike the other townspeople,
The heavily proclaimed novel “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak is a great story that can help you understand what living in Nazi Germany was like. Throughout the story, the main character, Liesel goes through many hardships to cope with a new life in a new town and to come to the recognition of what the Nazi party is. Liesel was given up for adoption after her mother gave her away to a new family, who seemed harsh at first, but ended up being the people who taught her all the things she needed to know. Life with the new family didn’t start off good, but the came to love them and her new friend, Rudy. As the book carried along, it was revealed that the Hubermanns were not Nazi supporters, and even took in a Jew and hid him in their basement later on in the book. Liesel became great friends with the Jew living in her basement, Max, who shared many similarities which helped form their relationship. Both of
Harlem’s public life was controlled by consumerism, there was democratic interaction by citizens. Chandler Owens, an African American writer and socialist, believed that cabarets invoked self expression and liberation. He wanted them incorporated into Harlem’s public life. However, other citizens were afraid that their community was going to become the central place for “entertainment and profit” (312). These citizens were afraid that their neighborhood was going to become a place solely for the purpose of making money. In the last paragraph of page 312 to the last paragraph of page 313 of Kevin Mattson’s “The Struggle for an Urban Democratic Public: Harlem in the 1920s” Mattson makes the argument that not only citizens, but also intellectuals came together to fight against issues that they believed were detrimental to their community. He argues that their battle against cabaret had everything to do with their morality and their “balance between rights and duties” (314) and nothing to do with Victorian prudery as Chandler Owen believed.
As it is said that during wars, a third party always benefits; the movie also shows how a Nazi-Czech business man (who is more of an opportunist and war profiteer) Oskar Schindler, uses Jewish laborers to start a factory pre-occupied in Poland. As a member of the Nazi party, Schindler is essentially politically driven and knows how to deal with the bureaucracy and those in power to get what he wants. Over time, he gets deeply affected by the treatment to Jews and begins to take steps to protect around 1500 people who worked for him. He was successful in convincing the authorities to build a new factory where the employees were interned and goes out of his way to hire those who face the rage of the camp commandant, Amon Goeth. When the camp is closed, he somehow manages to transfer "his" Jews to a new factory in Czechoslovakia. During all the hardships and struggle when the train carrying the women is diverted to Auschwitz, Schindler races to free them using a part of his fortune and his power to have them released. By the end of the war, Schindler has lost everything but has managed to save the lives of around 1100 of his employees. As World War II progressed, and the fate of the Jews became more and more clear, Schindler's motivations switched from profit to human sympathy, and Schindlerjuden, (literally translated as Schindler Jews) a new community was formed of around 1100 Jews who were saved from the deadly holocaust by Oskar
Towards friends and neighbours, Hans aids all of those that need it. After Mr. Kleinmann’s clothing store was vandalized, Death, the narrator, observed,“In sloppy lettering, the words JEWISH FILTH were spilling over at their edges.[...]Hans moved closer and stuck his head inside. “Do you need some help?” Mr. Kleinmann looked up.[...] “No, Hans. Please. Go away.” Hans had painted Joel Kleinmann’s house the previous year. He remembered his three children. He could see their faces but couldn’t recall their names. “I will come tomorrow,” he said, “and repaint your door”(181). Despite not knowing them very well, Hans still offers help towards those who have nothing, even if it may affect his own financial situation. As women who had nothing would come up to Hans and ask him to paint their blinds black, he said, ““Frau Hallah, I’m sorry, I have no black paint left,” he would say, but a little farther down the road, he would always break. There was tall man and long street. “Tomorrow,” he’d promise, “first thing,” and when the next morning dawned, there he was, painting those blinds for nothing, or for a cookie or a warm cup of tea”(354). Even though it was against the values of WWII Germany’s society, Hans still felt the need to help anyone, even if they were Jewish. “Papa reached into his paint cart and pulled something out. [...] The Jew stood before him, expecting another handful of
Karl Stern is an artistic, lanky, beat up, Jewish fourteen year-old boy whose only refuge is drawing cartoons for his younger sister and himself. All that changes in an instant when he meets the boxer, Max Schmeling in his father’s art gallery. In exchange for a painting, Karl will receive lessons from the world renowned fighter and national German hero. Suddenly he has a purpose: train to become a boxing legend. As the years go by and he gets stronger, both physically and emotionally, so does the hatred for the Jews in Germany. This new generation of anti-Semitism starts when Karl gets expelled from school and grows until his family is forced to live in Mr. Stern’s gallery. Though the Stern’s have never set foot into a synagogue and do not consider themselves “Jewish”, they are still subjects to this kind of anti-Semitism. They try to make the best of it, but Karl can see how much it affects his family. His mother is getting moodier by the day, his sister, Hildy, hates herself because of her dark hair and “Jewish” nose and his father is printing illegal documents for some secret buyers. On Kristallnacht the gallery is broken into and the family is torn apart. Karl must now comfort his sister and search for his injured father and his mother. With the help of some of exceptional people, he manages to get over these many obstacles and make his way to America.
In Maus the Germans dislike the Jews and with this discrimination and mistreatment, it caused Vladek and his family many hardships by trying to survive, “It was many, many such stories-synagogues burned, Jews beaten with no reason, whole towns pushing out all Jews-Each story worse than the other” (Speigalman) this quote explains how the Germans just didn’t like the Jew and that’s why they were being beaten and their businesses were being taken away. There are people in this world that don’t like a certain race, and think that their race is better than others; like the Nazis in Maus who were German, didn’t like the Jew so they killed and mistreated them. In the story by Spiegalman Jews were sent to concentration camps that the Nazis built to slowly torture and kill them. Controlled by Adolf Hitler, the Nazis took away the businesses of Jews and their own personal belongings; Spiegalman writes, “Has the family been taking good care of my Bielsko textile factory? Don’t you know?..All the Jewish businesses have been taken over by the Aryan Managers” (Speigalman 76) this quote explains how the Germans were taking over the Jewish people’s businesses and there was nothing that they can do about
After the video snippets of the Jews in the Polish ghetto, there is fade out then a fade in close-up shot of an Aryan man’s face and the machine he seems to be deeply focused on working on. Then there is an assortment of clips of close-up shots of Aryan people using their hands to craft something. In these clips there is a heavy emphasis on hands because the Nazis compare the Aryan’s man work ethic to that of the Jews. In this case, they want to reinforce the idea that the Aryan man is hard-working and is fully capable of creating their own goods with their bare hands, while the Jewish people make money off their hard work. This in turn, casts the Jews as the oppressors and the Aryan people as the oppressed, implying that they are being taken advantage
Throughout the communist era in Central and Eastern Europe, but especially in the first half of that era, capitalism was seen as immoral and inhumane. Capitalism, as discussed by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto, was the cause of many social ills in society and needed to be overthrown (Marx 221-222). In “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Tadeusz Borowski uses imagery and characters to compare and contrast the Nazi labor camp to capitalism. Although the ideology of capitalism is not as cruel as the Nazi labor camps, when put in practice it does have some similarities to these camps. Of course, Borowski wrote this story while he was a member of the communist party, which suggests that his opinion of capitalism may be skewed. Nevertheless, in the discussion that follows, I will argue that Borowski’s use of imagery in “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” was intended to portray the structure, motivations, and social interactions within the camp as similar to those of capitalist society.
His real experience of the situation fueled the interest in creating this film adaption of Bohumil Hrabal’s novel of the same name, adding accuracy to the character motivations and world appearance. The class textbook, The Art of Watching Films, mentions that in movies like this, “the action and characters have a significance beyond the context of the film itself” (Boggs 22). Although the film comes across as somewhat whimsical, the meaning behind it is very serious; it touches on the categories of Moral Implications with greed and lust and Social Problems by satirizing the Nazis and their impact on Czechoslovakia. This movie is a good representation as to why foreign films are important for students to watch, as it touches on a national event (WWII) with an angle that would be incredibly tough to recreated in America. This film lampoons a dark part of Czech history with its wit, brightness, and aptly-placed
The ghetto’s deplorable living conditions were a harrowing sight. I first noticed how isolated the ghetto was from the rest of the world. High, hermetic walls did not allow a millimeter of open space. German soldiers stood watch at nearly every point, accompanied by their ferocious watchdogs. The Nazis had placed a curfew on the ghetto; anyone seen outside after dark would be severely punished, if not killed on sight. Multiple families were cramped into small, dilapidated buildings. During an interview with a Jewish man named Shepsel Milgrom, he proclaimed, “We’re living in a closet.” However, many individuals were without shelter entirely and slept on the streets.
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...
A film bursting with visual and emotional stimuli, the in-depth character transformation of Oscar Schindler in Schindler’s List is a beautiful focal point of the film. Riddled with internal conflict and ethical despair, Schindler challenges his Nazi Party laws when he is faced with continuing his ambitious business ideas or throwing it all away for the lives of those he once saw as solely cheap labor. Confronted with leading a double life and hiding his motivations from those allegiant to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Schindler undergoes numerous ethical dilemmas that ultimately shape his identity and challenge his humanity. As a descendent of a Jewish-American, Yiddish speaking World War II soldier who helped liberate concentration camps in Poland, this film allowed for an enhanced personal
A lot of consideration was put into this novels appropriateness for children; it was thought parents might have to explain the Holocaust; however it was decide...
all a bit too much. It seems the whole world has gathered here just to