Events In The Concentration Camps example essay topic

His 113 Final Paper on The Drowned and the Saved I chose to use option one for the last writing assignment. I can understand where some of Primo Levis ideas are coming from. It is hard to argue with someone that actually lived through the terrible events in World War II and in the concentration camps. There are some similarities between the death camps and the ideas of a modern society, but there are also some differences. It appears to me that the Nazis tried to use and portray enlightenment ideas to justify their actions. The Nazis also succeeded in using their prisoners against each other so that they did not have to the dirty work themselves.

I agree with Levi in the sense that horrible situations can make good people do horrible things. This idea was shown every time that someone was beaten, killed or starved in the concentration camps. In many cases people that suffered the same misfortune at the beginning were abusing the other Jews that came into the camp. If the prisoners were able to live long enough and help out the Nazis they were able to achieve a higher social status or privilege within the concentration camp universe. The gray zone is a good example of how peoples minds can be beaten down and corrupted when they are suffering severely. Someone living in the United States during present times could very easily criticize the prisoners who were helping run the camps for their actions.

Obviously there was anger in the senior prisoners, but I dont think that is the reason they were mean to the new arrivals. The guards had been in the camps long enough to figure out how to survive and knew that the easiest way to get yourself killed was to show that you had your own will. Prisoners that acted like they had been beaten and were willing to d what the SS wanted actually had a chance to survive. In a subtle way the camp guards were trying to break the spirit of the new arrivals to show them how to stay alive and that they needed to look out for themselves. Many of the brutal prisoners that managed to survive to the end of the war, as time progressed after the war, had less recollection of the hardships that they caused for the other prisoners. Some of the SS guards who were people with a conscience suffered from the same suppression of memory.

Primo Levi talks, in his book, about human memory and what effects the events that are retained in a persons memory. This definitely worked to the advantage of the Nazis in World War II. Traumatic events sometimes cause a person to block out unpleasant parts of a memory. The events in the concentration camps were made so horrible that many people had a tendency to forget the details. For this reason, I believe that this type of war could definitely happen again.

I do think the chances of it happening again are very slim and that in todays society as a whole people are more educated and reminded of what really happened. People need to be reminded continuously so that they are not subject to the same manipulation that happened to the Germans in World War II. One difference between then and now is, in general, people in the more powerful nations of the world are more educated. That is one reason why the possibility of such horrible events happening again would not be probable. The Nazis were able to make Germans of all types believe that killing people was the only way to change Germany and the world. By shipping out all the Jews to Poland and getting them off of German soil citizens of Germany were kept from seeing the horrible things that were happening to the Jews.

Although everyone must have known what was going on, the atrocities were out of sight and out of mind. The German citizens were able to buy cheap houses and businesses that were owned by the victims of the death camps. Since the pure blooded German people were able to benefit, they were willing to accept the idea of the Jews being deported. The Nazis were able to keep uprisings to a minimal level because the killing was concentrated to the camps. The camps were even kept separate from each other so their massive scale was not as apparent. Hitler began the war by selling the idea that he was creating the perfect race.

That is one way in which he was able to spark German nationalism in an enormous scale. He effectively made people believe that killing was horrible, but it was necessary for liberty, equality, and fraternity. This is where I disagree from primo Levi. While enlightenment ideas were used to justify the things that happened, most enlightenment ideas were not used. Although the Nazis were using these ideas to maintain support and nationalism, the actual intentions of Hitler were different.

Hitler was able to create a sense of fraternity in Germany by getting rid of people that had different religious beliefs than everyone else. One enlightenment idea that has been important in many revolutions was education. Hitler tried to keep people from being educated by burning books and eliminating intellectual types of people. Hitler them gave them his book, Mein Kampf, to read. I have never actually looked at his book but I have heard that if people had paid attention to what it said, they would have known what he was planning to do. Hitler made them think that the only education they needed was skills that would enable them to do the work that they were doing.

Since many of the German people had jobs at the time, they were content. I think the idea of regeneration through violence can definitely be an enlightenment idea depending upon how it is used and also depending upon the purpose of the violence. In previous revolutions there was some horrifying actions taken by groups of people just as there was in WW II. In the other examples of regeneration through violence there was a group or groups of people that banded together against some sort of injustice or oppression. At the time there was very few other ways to solve the problems at hand. The Nazis tried to create a false sense of fraternity, but in the process of doing it he depended upon peoples ignorance to manipulate them into following him and not a common cause.

Hitler attempted to eliminate education, which is a very important enlightenment idea. Hitler, before WW II, did succeed in building up Germany. His primary goal through his leadership in Germany was to take over Europe. This was not the goal of most people in Germany, but they were led into supporting a cause that they really didnt understand.

WW II was not an example of regeneration through violence it was just violence. Violence has definitely proven to be a part of enlightenment, in some cases, throughout history. I think that what happened in World War II was maybe a little out of the ordinary, but history has proven that one way to facilitate change is through violence. One of the key criteria to a revolution through change is the need for a common goal or reason for the violence. In the case of Germany there was no common goal to create an idea of fraternity among the people.

Everyone saw that they had a job and that if they didnt do their job and follow Hitler they would have to suffer harsh consequences. Everyone did what they had to do out of fear and was short of options at the time.