Tran: The Final Solution

The Wannsee Conference.


Genocide is never accidental, but a premeditated and concise plan that is carried out efficiently. In the film Conspiracy, the Third Reich officials are laying down the ground works for the ‘Final Solution’ that was already underway. It is evident in this film that the Nazis didn’t care about Jewish people individually, but they just wanted to get rid of them collectively. It didn’t matter whether Jews were from the Soviet Union or Germany; they were all the same though there was discussion in this film about the differences between them. The Final Solution was already in motion and these men were only there to give their support. It is interesting how the two Polish officials wanted to expedite the extermination of their Jews because the ghettos were becoming a problem in their country. The Jews had to be exterminated as a whole in all of Europe and with the new gassing method—at an aggressive rate.

Night is account of one of the millions of stories of the suffering and traumatic experiences of victims during the war and the Holocaust. One of the most surprising revelation in Weisel’s novel is how late in the war was when his community was deported. The Wannsee Conference happened in 1942 and that plan was carried out immediately, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1944 when deportation actually reached Wiesel home of Sighet. Deportation in Hungary was happening much earlier and I suppose they were clearing out the Jews there first which took longer. It’s strange to think around the same time; France was being liberated, while this was only then coming to Romania. No one in this community could have imaged what was going on or what would happen to them, but there were warnings from Moshe. No one listened to him or the woman who screamed ‘fire!’ while on the train. As Weisel recounts his life from that time, he could have never imagined losing half his family or where they would end up. It’s sadden and astounding to read his words as he becomes more and more numb throughout the novel because he no longer has hopes or fears of anything. He mentions how he became ashamed of himself when he contemplates his father dying sooner so his survival rate would be better. He says though that there were so many others who had family with them, but in the end you could only think of yourself and your survival. He fought to keep his father alive for as long as he could, but it wasn’t enough and he barely survived the last few months himself. He writes how those months before April 1945 were all a blur to him because it didn’t even matter anymore and he lost himself in all the madness.

Regardless of the The Soviet Story’s accuracy in depicting the correlation between Stalin’s regime and Hitler’s, it does shed light on the Ukraine massacre that most don’t even know about. The clips and photos from that Ukraine are so similar to the ones that came out the concentration camps. In the article on the Ukrainian Genocide it even states, “Stalin turned Ukraine into one large concentration camp.” It’s hard to even comprehend seven million people dying in a span of a year, though about 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in a span of 100 days. In a way, Stalin’s regime was just as brutal as Hitler if not more so. He set up concentration camp for his own people and deported people to labor camps in remote areas and relocated many to Siberia. The film’s interview with people who were affected by this shows how there has been no justice for the victims and there might never be because present day Russian won’t speak of the Soviet past in that negative way. The war ended in 1945, but Stalin’s Soviet regime continued to nearly the end of the 20th century and even more died post WWII era.