Jews And The Germans example essay topic

The Holocaust Experience The world that people lived in during the Holocaust is described by the personal experiences of the oppressed throughout the story Jack and Rochelle, written by Jack and Rochelle Sut in, and the memoir by Alexander Donat titled The Holocaust Kingdom. The horrifying mindset of the oppressors, particularly the Nazi's, is illustrated in both books. The vicious and relentless emotional, physical, and psychological abuse the Nazi's targeted at their victims is depicted in detail. The unspeakable cruelty received by the Jews dramatically altered their state of mind and how they lived their lives.

The emotions of despair, distress, depression, hopelessness, helplessness felt by the Jews eventually turn to hate, anger, hopefulness, faith, and ultimately revenge against all oppressors. The Holocaust was a traumatic and tragic time in history to say the least. Those who were victims of the mistreatment were forced to respond. In Jack and Rochelle, both families were used to some form of oppression. Growing up in Poland, Rochelle and her family were used to feeling hated. Here is an example through dialogue of how some of the Poles felt about the Jews and the Germans: "Just wait!

Hitler is coming and he " ll off the heads of all you Jews". Rochelle: "What are you so happy about? The Germans might cut off my head, but your independence will be gone. Poland won't be Poland anymore!" They would tell me that it was worth losing their independence just to get rid of the Jews (page 8, Jack and Rochelle)".

Jack also experienced mistreatment even before the Germans came. In the town of Mir, he attended a grade school where he was singled out by the teachers: "As for school work, if we failed to complete an assignment or to pass a test, we were singled out for special criticism, well beyond what a Polish student would receive. "What's the matter Jew?" the teacher would ask us. "Can't keep up? (page 14, Jack and Rochelle)". They knew that they could not stay in Poland: ". ... there was no freedom, no future for us in Poland (page 16, Jack and Rochelle)". The Jews in Poland knew that they were not welcome.

Here is an example of how Jack felt from early childhood growing up in Poland: "Did I have a sense that Jews were hated in Poland? You didn't need to have a sense of it. I knew it from the time I was two, three years old. By that age, you knew that you were not the same as all the other kids, that you were discriminated against in the subtlest ways, as well as in the most overt and painful ways (page 16, Jack and Rochelle)". On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland.

The Soviet troops arrived in Mir, where Jack's parents lived, and took control a few days after the invasion. The troops seemed friendly. The Russians chose not to acknowledge the "Jewish problem". The Russian occupation was not too bad, especially when compared to the German occupation.

In June 1941, Germany invaded the eastern part of Poland. They turned on their Russian allies who were caught by surprise by the Nazi Blitzkrieg and did not put up much of a fight. At the beginning of their occupation, the Nazi's were secretive about their plans and actions. Then, "about two months after the initial occupation, the action against the Jews were intensified (page 40, Jack and Rochelle)". The Jews were instructed to give up all valuables and then pack. The Jews were headed for the ghetto, which "was located in the worst part of town (page 40, Jack and Rochelle)".

When Jack and the rest of the Jewish population living in the Mir Ghetto and the ghetto of Zamek realized that some way or another, their ultimate fate would more than likely be death, Jack decided he would not go down without a fight. He would not go down without avenging the wrongful deaths of Jews. He responded by escaping from the ghetto of Zamek with the help of a Jewish friend, posing as a German. This man was Oswald Rufeisen. "After the Germans invaded western Poland, Rufeisen fled east and ultimately wound up in the vicinity of Mir, where he posed as a citizen of dual Polish and German ancestry (page 52, Jack and Rochelle)". Rufeisen was asked to serve the Germans as a translator.

Rufeisen helped smuggle in weapons to the Jews. Living in the presence of Nazi's the Jews mindset was that there was "no way of avoiding the conclusion that they would die whether we ran or stayed (page 55, Jack and Rochelle)". We recognized the hell we were living in - we could not but recognize it (page 55, Jack and Rochelle)". The Jews survived by changing their mindset. They were not going down without a fight. Here is an example of how Jack's mindset changed him into a braver individual who would try his best to take some control of his life: "We were doing our best to survive, even to resist, but no one in our group expected to come out alive from that hell.

The main thing was not to be taken alive by the Germans, not to submit to their questions, their tortures, and a passive death at their hands. We were always armed and had an understanding that if we were ambushed, we would fight until we were killed. If need be, we would shoot one another rather than be captured. It was inevitable that we would die - but death would come on our terms (page 67, Jack and Rochelle)". Once Jack came to this realization his personality changed.

He started to take huge risks and was very brave. To stay alive, Jack and the rest of his group would go on food raids to stay alive. Here is an example of Jack, the leader of his group, trying to survive the German occupation: "I would pick farms that were owned by Nazi sympathizers and were situated only two miles from German police headquarters. We would break into the houses and steal lots of food and clothing (page 67, Jack and Rochelle)".

In The Holocaust Kingdom, written by Alexander Donant, the horrors he experienced were the same. Jews were hated, tortured, and eventually killed - quickly and slowly. Donant, along with other fellow Jews described the way that they felt toward the German occupation: "The feeling we had for the Germans cannot be oversimplified into hatred. Hatred we felt, but the chief emotion was terror.

We couldn't think of the Germans as human beings (page 87, The Holocaust Kingdom)". Some of the prisoners in the camps tried to stay as positive as possible and were tired of the German oppression. "Jewish young people who held their heads high, prepared for anything that might happen. Rightly or wrongly, sensibly or not, faithful to Jewish tradition or against it, this portion of the ghetto youth had come to a decision: they had taken enough; they would take no more (page 92, The Holocaust Kingdom)". This shows how the Jews were changing their attitude, they were going to survive or die trying. This quote in The Holocaust Kingdom illustrates this: "There was a stubborn, unending, continuous battle to survive...

Jewish resistance was the resistance of a fish caught in a net, a mouse in a trap, an animal at bay. It is a pure myth that the Jews were merely "passive", that they did not put up resistance to the Nazis who had decreed their destruction. The Jews fought back against their enemies to a degree no other community anywhere in the world would have been capable of... they fought against hunger and starvation, against disease, against a deadly Nazi economic blockade. They fought against murderers and against traitors within their own ranks, and they were utterly alone in their fight (page 7, The Holocaust Kingdom)". No quote can even come close to illustrating the horrible things experienced by the unfortunate victims during the Holocaust, but this quote seems somewhat adequate. The Jewish people were truly heroic during this embarrassing time for the human race.

I never knew humans could be so cruel and not blink an eye. It is even more baffling that many of the evil - doers were normal, educated people. Finally, in April of 1945 the camps were liberated. After the liberation of the Jews, many of the Jewish inmates of the camps were too weak to move. Many of the Jews being liberated were so delusional from the continuous negligence, torture, unspeakable acts, mass killings, (basically an unrealistic experience), that they were not aware of what was happening. The Jewish prisoners were not restored to health simply by liberation.

More painful than their captivity was the awakening from nightmares. When the prisoners began to improve physically, they were then able to feel and think and realize what had really happened to them. Many of the Jewish survivors described themselves as incapable of living their lives to the fullest. They often caught themselves unable to perform tasks that are considered very basic. Some felt that the war and the imprisonment had such a dramatic affect on their life that they had their spark to life that they once had.

The traumatic experience of these camps has deeply scarred many of the unfortunate prisoners during the Holocaust. Let us all pray that a time like the Holocaust never comes about again.