Holocaust survivor and former Chairman of the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center in Washington, D.C., Henry Friedman, once said, "We are all different; because of that, each of us has something different and special to offer and each and every one of us can make a difference by not being indifferent." Henry Friedman walks earth as a free man, but as a boy in the holocaust, he still feels as if his individuality was stripped away from him permanently. As we view Night, Soviet Story, and Conspiracy, we can see three different ways politically fueled genocide completely erased the individuality of millions across Europe.
Beginning with Elie Wiesel’s Night, the most prominent way individuality was taken away from the Jews, as described in the book, was the uniformity of appearance between each member of the concentration camps. Nazis found no need to search within for tools possessed by the individuals, such as knowledge. Once separated in this manner, some prisoners are sent to work camps and some sent to death camps, such as Elie and his father sent to Auschwitz. Other instances along the journey involved the shaving of heads, stripping of clothes, and group showers. All of these create uniformity in the Nazi vision. Nazis went so far as to give a number to each prisoner. Elie Wiesel was given the number A-7713.
Moving to Conspiracy, we break away from the brutality the journey Wiesel went through and how his individualism was taken from him, and we move to how even German officials were also not seen as individuals. At the beginning of the docu-dramaticised Wannsee Conference, the members of the conference were asked by Reinhard Heydrich to introduce themselves to the other groups represented in the conference. Contrary to how we introduce ourselves, the majority of the members mumbled over their own name, put major emphasis on the division of Nazi Germany they belonged to, and pledged eternal allegiance to the fuehrer. It seemed as though even the highest ranking officials, besides Hitler’s closest officials, were purely seen as pawns moved by Hitler so that he would be able to follow through with the “Final Solution.”
Finally, in Soviet Story, we see how a person’s legacy defines his or her individuality. The difference between the Nazi extermination of the Jews and the Soviet extermination of the Ukrainians, was that the Nazi extermination was intricately planned and documented. All prisoners of the Nazis were tagged documented number and registered. When files turn up, we are at least able to somewhat gain a bit of knowledge of what concentration camp a relative belonged to or where the relative was picked up from on the train cars. In Soviet Story, the memory of millions of Ukrainians was erased clean. It is by the legacy our ancestors leave behind that defines them as an individual. The Ukraine lost 7,000,000 legacies in one year.
Individualism is defined in three different ways by these three films; appearance, personal agendas, and legacy.
Nice blog, I like the way you deal with the loss of individual identity in a genocidal situation. Calling Jews dogs, etc., lessens their humanity and thus their individuality. Yes, the keeping of records by the Nazis also helped to restore individuality, even in death, to some people. The Soviets tended simply to slaughter without keeping legal documents, but you can be assured that the genocide in the Ukraine was governments sponsored. Interestingly, another slaughter, that of the Polish Officers, which was long attributed to the Nazis, was done on Stalin's command.
ReplyDeleteTregre: Week 1 Response
ReplyDeleteJeff, I really liked this blog post. It kept my attention the entire time and is very organized. In this class, the psychological aspect holds my attention. The numbers that were given to the Holocaust victims always intrigued me. With the Stanford Prison Experiment, a famous psychology case, people volunteered to recreate a jail hierarchy. People became inmates and guards. When the inmates were given numbers, it dehumanized them making it easier to treat the inmates inhumane. I feel like the Jews were the systematic ordering of groceries lined up on a conveyor belt at a grocery store to be exterminated, each one rung up then discarded. Also I am glad you touched base on documenting the people. Keeping documents on them made it much more organized which makes it that much more scary. It was well thought out and so organized to kill these people in masses. It definitely makes someone take a step back and realize what society is capable of. As long as a person is dehumanized and a connection is not made, people can do anything to another. Quite sad.
Hello Jeff,
ReplyDeleteYour blog was wonderful and very well put together, congratulations. But, more than anything, it was your first paragraph that made me think.
It seems to me like the Nazis succeeded in that aspect, in stripping away the individualism of a human being. I mean, don't we continue to do so today? It's always the 'Holocaust', and in that solitary word millions of people, of beautifully and individually created human beings lay their souls down to rest. We hear select stories of a few people, ordinary human beings, who managed to get their words across to the hearts of others; Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel ect... but I ask myself, what of the others? Do we even stop to think about their stories? Or do we just see them all as the people of the Holocaust.
We're still stripping individualism without meaning to, almost as if the Nazis had left us no other way to think of these people than as a whole.