Brother and Sister Hans and Sophie Scholl are forever recognized for their gallantry, witnessed by their community, recorded in official court documents, and reestablished in a dramatic film directed by Macr Rothemund and written by Fred Breinersdorfer (IMDb). In their film, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, the audience is introduced to “The White Rose”; a Nazi resistance group constructed in 1992 by a group of young Germans. Out of respect for human life, this group used powerful altercation reflected in the distribution of 6 leaflets (An Honorable Defeat). The film concentrates on The Scholl’s siblings final attempt to distribute copies of these leaflets, their arrest, and interrogation leading up to their execution. When historical stories
are married with fictional work of art there is a fear of losing sight of historical accuracy and the image that is painted. There are those who believe that the appropriate way to learn about such historical events is through personal testimonies, documentaries, and primary source documents. Holocaust concentration camp survivor and author of his memoir Night, Elie Wisel “argues that to fictionalize ‘insults the dead’” (A Thousand Darknesses). There is justification that supports Wisel’s fear. Authors like Binjamin Wilkomirski, an author of Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, an “authentic testimony” of his first hand survival during the Holocaust or so his readers thought. A man who’s writing was compared to that of Ann Frank’s and showered with prestigious awards including the National Jewish Book Award is later exposed to be merely a literary hoax. Wilkomirski was discredited in a newspaper article written by Daniel Ganzfried exposing his real identity, birthplace, and most importantly homeland during the war, proving his writing to be a falsification (Fragments as Fiction). In any case there is always the weight of such outliers that distort the overall reputation of the subject.
The book I choose for the book talk is “Dead and gone” written by Norah McClintock, this book talks about a murder mystery of Tricey Howard. The main character of the story is Mike, an orphan whose parents got killed in a car crash. He lives with his foster father named John Riel, who was once a police officer. During a swim meet, Mike see Mr.Henderson is staring at a girl name Emily without stopping. Then he informs Emily about what happened in the community center. However, as return Emily blackmails Mike to investigate Mr. Henderson. During the investigation, Mike finds nothing suspicious, but realize Emily is the daughter of Tricey Howard. Tricey Howard was murdered years ago, but the police still haven’t find the real killer. At the meantime,
Again in 1933, Richard Plant, a gay German Jew, fled to Switzerland and to the United States five years later, began his research when he visited Germany in the 1950’s. His book, The Pink Triangle, is the first comprehensive account of this hidden aspect of Nazism and use of The Star of David and, nevertheless, the Pink
In 1944, the Jews of Hungary were relatively unaffected by the catastrophe that was destroying the Jewish communities of Europe in spite of the infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935-designed to dehumanize German Jews and subject them to violence and prejudice. The Holocaust itself did not reach Hungary until 1944. In Wiesel's native Sighet, the disaster was even worse: of the 15,000 Jews in prewar Sighet, only about fifty families survived the Holocaust. In May of 1944, when Wiesel was fifteen, his family and many inhabitants of the Sighet shtetl were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The largest and deadliest of the camps, Auschwitz was the site of more than 1,300,000 Jewish deaths. Wiesel's father, mother, and little sister all died in the Holocaust. Wiesel himself survived and immigrated to France. His story is a horror story that comes to life when students in high school read this novel. Even though many students have not witnessed or participated in such horror, they relate to the character because Wiesel is their age. They cannot believe someone went through the nightmare he did at their age.
Although first impressions of the German soldiers were reassuring to Wiesel and many Jews at first, shortly after they had arrived the Jew’s freedoms were taken without any warning. German soldiers took the Jew’s rights one at a time. First, Jews were not allowed to leave there house for three days. Then, they were no longer allowed to keep their gold, jewels, or valuable items. Wiesel explains, “Everything had to be handed over to the authorities, under penalty of death. My father went down to the cellar and buried out savings” (8). Next, they were forced to wear the yellow star. Eventually, Jews were not allowed to go into restaurants or cafes, to travel the railway, attend synagogue, or go into the street after six o’clock. The last step was that two ghettos were formed in the town of Sighet. It was like they were dogs in a fenced crate, not allowed to go anywhere or do anything. When the Jews started to question Wiesel’s father during the development of these rules, he reassured every one, and acted like it was no big deal. Wiesel’s father settled and acknowledged the situation claiming, “The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You don’t die of it…” (Wiesel 9). None of the Jews including Wiesel’s fami...
Through segregation, loss of identity, and abuse, Wiesel and the prisoners around him devolve from civilized human beings into savage animals. The yellow stars begin separation from society, followed by ghettos and transports. Nakedness and haircuts, then new names, remove each prisoner’s identity, and physical abuse in the form of malnourishment, night marches, and physical beatings wear down prisoners. By the end of Night, the prisoners are ferocious from the experiences under German rule and, as Avni puts it, “a living dead, unfit for life” (Avni 129). The prisoners not only revert to animal instincts, but experience such mental trauma that normal life with other people may be years away. Night dramatically illustrates the severe dehumanization that occurred under Hitler’s rule.
The Holocaust was a huge historical event that changed many people’s lives. Eli Wiesel, a survivor of the holocaust, opens up about his horrifying experience. The story tells his journey of his time at the Aushwitz concentration camp, then Buchenwald. He discusses losing his family, faith, and sense of self. In “Eight Simple, Short Words”, Eli Wiesel successfully utilizes symbolism, imagery, and tone.
Susan Wolf, born in 1952, is widely considered one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th and 21st century. One of Wolf’s most renowned works is The meanings of Lives, which drew a lot of attention in the philosophical world for a number of questions that arose from it. Arguably her most widely debated and questioned assertion in The meanings of Lives is “If you care about yourself you’re living as if you’re the center of the universe, which is false.” This however I don’t not believe to be true. Every human being, no matter how successful or unsuccessful, has the right to care for them sleeves and not believe they are the center of the universe while doing so.
The chaos and destruction that the Nazi’s are causing are not changing the lives of only Jews, but also the lives of citizens in other countries. Between Night by Elie Wiesel and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are crucial to the survival of principle characters. Ironically, in both stories there is a foreseen future, that both seemed to be ignored.
The White Rose was formed in Munich in 1942 by students at the University of Munich named Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorell. These students constantly heard others discuss the atrocities of Hitler’s regime and the disturbing stories of over 200,000 Jewish people being murdered. Hans Scholl, the leader of the White Rose group,
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
Susan Glaspell is a thought-provoking exemplar of an authentic early feminist writer, “born in 1882 in Davenport, Iowa.” (Learner) She grew up in a small, conservative, middle-class town in the Midwest, which had a powerful influence on her. Her evolution from regional focused compositions to modernism was made possible and achieved by her geographical relocation to the east coast. Following her graduation “from Drake University” (Learner) she found there to be copious boundaries and restraints for women in the work place. She expressed her resentment of these boundaries, and promoted the feminist movement in her fictional and dramatic writings in many arenas: novels, journalism, short stories, and plays. Her most notorious, profound, and controversial writing was the play Trifles, which is equaled only in magnitude and weightiness by the novel Fidelity. Glaspell use of sympathetic female characters was a brilliant way to advocate contemporary feminist issues.
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 setting of this story takes place in Berlin during the time of the Holocaust. The plot of this
In her article, “‘This Is the End of the World’:The Black Death,” which was on the New York Times best-seller list in 1978, writer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Tuchman reports about the devastating impact of the Black Death in Europe from 1347 to 1350. [Summary] Tuchman starts her article describing the arrival of the deadly plague in October 1347 brought by Genoese trading ships docked at the Sicilian port of Messina and its effects it has on Europe’s population (257-263). [Paraphrase] Tuchman describes about the terrible epidemic that is speculated to have emerged from China and how it is continuously spreading throughout Europe killing countless number of people (258). Tuchman names out a long list of European cities and how
In Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder teaches philosophy and it explains basic philosophical ideas better than any other reading book or textbook that I have ever read. The many philosophical lessons of the diversified thinkers of their own time were dexterously understood. The author has a wonderful knack for finding the heart of a concept and placing it on display. For example, he metamorphoses Democritus' atoms into Lego bricks and in a stroke makes the classical conception of the atom dexterously attainable. He relates all the abstract concepts about the world and what is real with straightforward everyday things that everyone can relate to which makes this whole philosophy course manageable. ''The best way of approaching philosophy is to ask a few philosophical questions: How was the world created? Is there any will or meaning behind what happens? Is there a life after death? How can we answer these questions? And most important, how ought we to live?'' (Gaarder, Jostein 15).