Films and Books on the Holocaust

Hello all,

I put together a list of books and films, including the ones that students had mentioned in class. Please add other items to this list by writing a comment to this post.

Films:

Shoah (documentary)
Night and Fog (documentary)
Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust (documentary)

Hitler's Children (documentary)

The Pianist

The Reader

The Diary of Anne Frank

The Night Porter

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Life is Beautiful

Judgment at Nuremberg

The Pawn Broker

Sophie's Choice

Fictions and Memoirs:

The Wave by Todd Strosser 

The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

Night by Elie Wiesel

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski

Aushwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo

Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer

Response:  The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

Annie Kominek

           

This particular reading spoke of something I have been thinking of for years, ever since first studying the Holocaust as a child and learning of my personal family history within the Holocaust itself. I have always been curious to hear the stories of those millions that died during the Holocaust, particularly after learning that my distant family that were Gypsies, were persecuted and died in camps during the war.  I have not an ounce of Jewish blood in me, but I am descended from Polish gypsies and thus feel it is my duty and an inherent need to share their story. But how can I hear their stories? Other than through diaries, like Anne Frank, or letters of correspondence (of which I am sure there are few to none that ever existed), we have no way of knowing the truth of the suffering of those in Auschwitz or any other work camp.

“We, the survivors, are not the true witnesses. This is an uncomfortable notion f which I have become conscious little by little… We the survivors are not only an exiguous but also an anomalous minority: we are those who by their prevarications or abilities or good luck did not touch the bottom. Those who did so, those who saw the Gorgon, have not returned to tell about it…the submerged, the complete witnesses, the ones whose deposition would have a general significance (Levi, 84).”

I have always had in my mind that I want to hear the accounts of those that were not fortunate. I want to hear tale of those that were beaten to death, gassed, thrown against an electric fence – I feel their stories are the ones we truly need to hear. A third-party account is good, but there is a certain amount of distance from it. We are removed from the pain and suffering twofold: in that we did not experience it ourselves, nor did the author who is trying to explain the suffering of the deceased. When reading Maus by Art Spiegelman, I found the entire time that, while I was excited to read about the Polish side of the war from the perspective of a fellow Pole, I felt that the main character was just lucky, and not the story I wanted to hear. I want to hear the suffering, to feel it, so as I might honor them in the only way that I can, and that is to bear witness. To hear the things that I never want to know and could never forget. I feel I owe it to all the sufferers, especially those whose blood I share. I never heard their story and I never will. Their story has passed with them, and I will never assuage my guilt for living such a comfortable life when they suffered so terribly, nor will I ever be able to give them the courtesy of simply sharing their life story. I am glad Levi brought up the fact that the survivors are not the true storytellers of the Holocaust. They have a limited scope and see through the small lens of a survivor, the minority, while the millions and millions of people who suffered tremendously and perished can never share their experiences. Dead men tell no tales, and it is a tragedy that we can never truly tell it for them.

Annie K. Response: Americanization of the Holocaust

“But what if Holocaust memory was becoming a substitute for real action against contemporary genocide, instead of its inspiration? In the end we must recognize that memory cannot be divorced from the actions taken on its behalf, and that memory without consequences may even contain the seeds of its own destruction (Young, 82).” This reading was very poignant to me; the points that James Young raised really hit home. He talks of a memorial that America constructed that is not only to remind us of the terrible tragedies that occurred during the Holocaust, but is also self-serving in that it was built to remind us of the ‘good’ that America is, and how it has become a refuge and a safe haven for those that are oppressed. I feel that, while the Holocaust is something certainly worth remembering, the building of the museum was more about America trying to say “we are safe” while simultaneously warning those against future genocide. But really, what has the museum accomplished? Genocide is still happening in the world (albeit not in America) yet we do little about it. Places such as Rwanda, Darfur, Uganda, and more still suffer yet we do little about it. I agree with Young that we feel that we are, in a way, exempt from these genocides as long as we are remembering the worst one. 

I do believe, however, that the museum is interested in further research and opening up conversations about genocide. The worst thing for victims of genocide is to keep quiet; to hide it and push it under the rug. We as people of the world need to think about, talk about and be aware of genocide so it will not continue to happen. The museum, while it may have opened the conversation up and served as a memorial for those that suffered in one of the worst genocides in human history, it is just the beginning of a much larger effort needed on behalf of the entire world to eradicate genocide completely.

Also, here is an interesting video I found on the Museum’s website that explains how WWII and Nazism even came about.

http://www.ushmm.org/learn/introduction-to-the-holocaust/path-to-nazi-genocide

Rebecca Faison Response #2

    "…Such an answer challenged their very conception of what it meant to be American in the first place. For the first time a distinction had been drawn between 'events of American history' and those of 'Americans' history'" (Young 70). This line from James E. Young's "America's Holocaust" thew me for a loop. For years I had been frustrated over how America grew out of immigrants escaping their own country to an unknown land. They didn't travel all that way to create a whole new country; they came to live their lives the way they wanted. The people that lived in what would have become America wouldn't have seen themselves as a united people; each family had their own backstory, hardships, and reasons for traveling across the sea to get there. America was founded from other country's citizens. Having a difference between the country's history and the people's history is very complicated. The people make up the country, and to say that your citizens' background and reasoning for creating an entirely new life in your country is irrelevant isn't being realistic. While stating that the "monument might inspire other 'special groups' to be similarly represented of public land" (Young, 70) is plausible and could end up occupying an excess amount of land, drawing a line between the country's history and it's citizens history is denying the very basis that America was originally formed from -  unfit conditions in other countries that pushed their people to move.

Robby McElhaney post 2

While reading Levi’s piece I was really taken back by what he had to say about suicide among holocaust survivors. He discusses the rarity of suicide while imprisoned. “First of all, suicide is an act of man and not of the animal. It is a meditated act, a noninstinctive, unnatural choice, and in the Lager there were few opportunities to choose: people lived precisely like enslaved animals that sometimes let themselves die but do not kill themselves” (Levi 76). It’s very interesting and painful to think of how the victims were living so instinctually within those fences that they did not even have the time to think about death, seemingly the only thing that could save them from their torture. They were suffering to such a high degree that survival was all they could think about. The prisoners lived like dogs. All dogs care about is finding food to eat to live on to the next day. If you take two starving puppies from the same litter and throw a piece of meat between them they will instinctually fight over it regardless of the relationship they had between one another. They live very much in the moment worrying more about satisfying the hunger they feel in their bellies than anything else. It’s unfortunate to compare the prisoners to this animalistic behavior. The instinct to survive consumed every fiber of their being. Levi quoted the Confessions of Zeno, “When one is dying, one is much too busy to think about death” (Levi 76).  One would think that a person who is suffering as their lives tick away would hope for death. The concept that they could not even hope for death is traumatizing. 

Dimitri Stevens response to "The Americanization of the Holocaust"

After reading “The Americanization if the Holocaust,” I focused on the section titled “The first American memorials” by James E. Young.  The passage that seemed to be a turning point in the text was when he was talking about the three reasons why the New York City’s art Commission turned down the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising designs for the holocaust memorial.  It is understandable if it got turned down for not being aesthetically pleasing, but the main reason that was unfair was because they stated that the holocaust was not an American experience.  Young stated that “ For the Jewish survivors of the holocaust who had immigrated to America after World War II, and who regarded themselves as typical ‘New Americans,’ such an answer challenged their very conception of what it meant to be American in the first place(Young 70).”  I saw this section as a turning point because it was even stated in the text that for the first time there had been a distinction between “events in American history” and “Americans history.” 

                I enjoyed reading about the later support of the Americans, putting millions of dollars towards creating memorials for the Jewish.  I agree with the idea that some advances to support the cause were influenced by attaining or maintaining power politically.  The description of the construction of the architecture was very impressive and seemed to be well thought out in the section “Americas national Memorial to the Holocaust.”  Phrases mentioned in the passage like “Not only would this museum depict the lives of ‘new Americans, ‘but it would also reinforce America’s self-idealization as haven for the world’s oppressed” (Young 73).  

Artavius Post #2

After reading The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi, I found it very educating under the section from Ch. 3 entitled Shame. The chapter was very enlighting. While reading I noticed a true statement I myself learned from my past. Levi gave me a better understand on what exactly it was. The way he described it as an Anguish. Which means sever mental or physical pain or suffering. He said;

“One can think that one is suffering at facing the future and instead be suffering because of one's past; one can think that one is suffering for others, out of pity, out of compassion, and instead be suffering from one's own reasons, more or less profound, more or less avowable and avowed, sometimes so deep that only a specialist, the analyst of souls, knows how to exhume them.” (Levi 71).

I found this so true today. Like I stated earlier I had those same symptoms. Having Anguish is something very serious, and should most defiantly be treat for or get help. I think back and remember my high school years and how much I went through mentally, physically and emotional. I really was on the verge of suicide because suffering was so intense that the only way I felt to get away from it all or ease my pain was to kill myself. But after getting help and knowing how to control my emotions when a type of pain happens makes it so easier to get past the suffering so much faster.

Im excited to begin reading these short stories and essays that describe and take place in the traumatic experiences, specifically those dealing with the holocaust.   Both Ozick and Delbo do amazing jobs at describing and translating to the reader the physical, mental and emotional traumas those captives of Auschwitz and other concentration camps had to endure.

            Personally, I found Ozick’s short story “The Shawl” much more compelling of the two readings.  Writing this narrative as the main character allowed Ozick to place the reader in the footsteps of a Jewish woman who has been captured during the Holocaust.  By making this story so personal and grim, the sad realities are made clearer and the writer was able to create a mood that might of resembled the depression and hopelessness that was felt in these concentration camps.  Secondly, her style of writing all together helps to translate the emotion and mental stabilities of someone suffering these traumas.  Ozick uses lots of repetition in her descriptions of the physical sensations that Rosa was feeling and seeing.  After going through so much torture, suffering, and objectiveness, one can only imagine that these captive’s mental stability would shrivel to near nothing.  In the opening sentence, “Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell”(2299), the word “cold” is repeated, and showed up many times in describing the environment and emotions felt throughout the story.  She also described Stella and Rosa as “ravenous” repeatedly in the first page (2299).  I felt that the dreariest description given to these characters were when compared to air.  Very few times in my life have I been so tired and exhausted that a sense of numbness came over my body that I would relate to feeling like air, which I imagine would be ten-fold for the characters of “The Shawl.”

Taylor Loftin

In the short biography written by Tresa Grauer, it is mentioned that for Cynthia Ozick, the written word is a tool for “arousal” and “enchantment.” This is certainly true in the way she uses metaphor and analogy to create a beautifully tragic depiction of a holocaust experience. In “The Shawl,” the characters are starving, freezing, under constant observation, and their lives are threatened physically at all times. All this, while concealing a small child. However, despite how traumatizing these experiences must have been, Ozick reflects upon them in a way that is childlike, imaginative, and pure, as if the narrator is a young girl observing the situation. Even as the child dies, the perspective is innocently poetic. It is best exemplified in the final line: “So she took Magda’s shawl and filled her own mouth with it, stuffed it in and stuffed it in, until she was swallowing up the wolf’s screech and tasting the cinnamon and almond depth of Magda’s saliva; and Rosa drank Magda’s shawl until it dried” (2301, Ozick). Ozick leaves it up to the reader to interpret what is metaphor and what is reality.

The Shawl

The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick is a memorable short story that is about motherly love. In this story Rosa becomes a selfless woman during a difficult time. A time in which their worlds have been turned upside down and have become oppressed by a crazy mad man. During this time, Families are ripped apart and innocent people are killed on a daily basis. Rosa is a mother that has to protect those around her, her daughter Magda and sister Stella. Magda is a symbol of hope. She is young and innocent to the mad world around her. All she seeks is the comfort of being close to her mother and wrapped in the comfort of a shawl. Stella is a young woman that is constantly suffering and still needs to be cared for. The Shawl is a symbol of protection and life. It protects the young Magda from the world and keeps her close to her mother. It also keeps her protected from the harsh elements. However the shawl is something that is coveted by Stella because she is always cold. In the end Magda becomes a symbol of hope "Sometimes she laughed -- it seemed a laugh, but how could it be? Magda had never seen anyone laugh" (ozick, 2300). This shows that a young child has no way to comprehend the harsh reality, but gives hope to Rosa.

Jade Thiraswas

Both Cynthia Ozick and Charlotte Delbo's writings about life in concentration camps are morbid and intensely serious tragedies. While reading, for some reason I suspected a somewhat positive ending to occur after all the descriptions of suffering and misery. But I was incorrect about both stories. In "The Shawl" the horrific event of the baby dying was illustriously described in the last paragraph of the story. So full of metaphors and imagery, I had to re-read to understand what had actually happened. I had heard stories of this happening in concentration camps and it is such a horrifying thought, but I found the language Ozick uses to be very interesting, describing the sight with words of beauty, "She looked like a butterfly touching a silver vine. And the moment Magda's feathered round head and her pencil legs and balloonish belly and zigzag arms splashed against the fence, the steel voices went mad in their growling..." (Ozick 2301). The "steel voices" being the sounds of the high voltage electric fence. 

Blocking Out

Kayla Reid

One must pretend or imagine being somewhere else in order to survive and be happy but what does one do when it’s not possible? “In Auschwitz reality was so overwhelming, the suffering, the fatigue, the cold so extreme, that we had no energy left tor this type of pretending.” (Delbo 2) If it was so hard to pretend then how did they survive with ought that comfort? The reason people pretend and dream is because their reality is a bad place so in their dreams weather it is a day dream at night is like their “happy place”. It’s like going through something unpleasant and telling you “don’t think about it” over and over in order to survive this becomes necessary. I couldn’t imagine being so tired and not being able to escape even if it is inside my own mind. Because they couldn’t escape, they lost all hope for the future their life dragging on. Their present was so bleak that they had lost hope for the future. But once the victims left the camp and threw all of their memories behind, they had to put up a wall to block off the pain and suffering. The old memories are to be blocked off separate from the new memories because the old ones could taint the newer better memories. When the past collides with the present, the victim will be in constant fear and sorrow in order to spare the pain, they do not think about what happened. Sometimes they put on a brave face to act strong for society and the people they love but perhaps in reality, they are crumbling away on the inside. The memories are so raw and impactful that they cannot get over them. People remember the most terrible things that happened to them because it was so shocking and terrible they may not be able to make sense of it all when all you know is fear and death. Those terrible things changed them into the person they are today making them see themselves as flawed beings. Metaphors of two separate people; the bad memories and the good memories is true to a person because when someone constantly thinks about the bad things, they are a spate person, one who is fearful, sad, and weak. A person who thinks about the new memories or rather blocks out the bad ones has a better outlook on life and they are stable. One person has both stable emotions and thought while also having instable personalities inside them. Whichever one people see depend on what that individual is thinking about.  Sometimes it hurts too much to feel so they sacrifice their emotions to save them the pain when they are telling other people their story while in private, the slowly break down. Blocking out is important to the individual to save themselves heartache, pain, and sorrow.

In Charlotte Delbo's “Days and Memory” and Cynthia Ozick's “The Shawl”, both stories speak very much of motherhood in concentration camps and how these mothers copes, but both do so in extremely different ways. Delbo does a very good job of writing eloquently and fluidly to speak of the story of the Gypsy woman who even though her child was dead, she still chose to defend her with her life. She uses vivid language and metaphors in order to make the pieces that people who are not Holocaust survivors can understand, such as the molting of a snake to reveal new skin to the new skin of a Holocaust prisoner trying to return home and try to let go of their former self. In doing this, Delbo lets us into a very personal and private story but with her use of language and tone, still provides enough information for us to really be moved and for us as an audience to be able to relate in some way. In doing this, it makes her story as whole easier to understand, especially when juxtaposed next to Ozick’s “The Shawl”.

In Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl”, Ozick uses short and choppy sentences and tough to figure out metaphors in order to tell the story of a woman who had two kids and one who was slowly dying of starvation due to lack of breast milk from her mother. I found this story much harder to read because of the style of writing that she chose to use. It was very personal, but it was much harder to understand because the metaphors used weren’t very clear, even to someone who always tends to read between the lines. At the end of this story, I was confused, not moved - as I was with Delbo’s narrative. Though the language doesn’t make any situation more real, it was definitely harder to sympathize with a story that I did not quite understand due to the lack descriptive imagery and information in Ozick’s compared to Delbo’s.

Motherly Love

Anna Lacy
Trauma
January 27, 2014

Motherly Love

Being a mother in a concentration camp during the holocaust means having to not only take care

 of yourself but also having to take care of your child who is unable to care for themselves. Having to

 deal with the loss of a child in this type of situations i more than enough to push a person to the

breaking point mentally. In the article Days and Memories by Charlotte Delbo, she recounts a young

gypsy mother who was in the concentration camp with her and was so mentally broken up that her

baby died that she carried the body around and cared for it as if the child were still alive. The gypsy

mother was so heart broken by the death of her baby that she would rather be beaten to death with a

club than give up the child's corpse. On the other hand in Cynthia Ozick's tale The Shawl, a young

mother was marched to a concentration camp with her two daughters, one 14 and the other a few

months old. She was forced to keep her youngest daughter a secret and was successful until the 14

year old took a shawl which pacified the child and kept her quiet. The young infant cried out for the

shawl which drew the attention of the guards. The child, exhausted, grabbed the electric fence to

stead herself and ended up being electrocuted to death. The mother witnessed the death of her

youngest child while on the way to bring her the shawl to quiet her. The mother was then forced to

resist the urge to run to the aid of her child in order to avoid being shot.

The account of the mother willing to die for her already deceased child by Delbo, seems more

heartfelt and portrays honest motherly love pushed to the breaking point than in Ozick's story. Parts

of Ozick's story are unclear and scattered which make sound like a first hand account but when

compared to Delbo's account the flaws come to light. Delbo's account is not scattered and details a

clear. She included small details like what she is wearing or the smells which are not mentioned in

Ozick's story. The sincerity of the mother in Ozick's story appear false and the entire story comes

across as a well researched story made up of multiple first hand accounts.

Melanie Morrison Response

In Laub’s Bearing Witness, I found it interesting how, considering on the different accounts of how one may have experienced or heard about a situation, views on this situation are altered. When the survivor of Auschwitz spoke about her memories from her time there, historians wouldn’t claim her as a reliable source. When she spoke about the bombings, something like the number of chimneys destroyed would not have as strong as an impact as everything else that was going on at the time. It seemed as though her memory primarily focused on the chaos surrounding her at the moment and the exact details would be later altered in memory. It’s also interesting how people subconsciously pick memories in which they remember in great detail, but other memories are not so clear. The survivor remembered how she also brought belongings of gas victims to the inmates who needed them for survival however; she couldn’t remember the exact name of what she was working under. Laub also says how, “She was perking up again as she described these almost breathtaking exploits of rescue.” However, after he asked about the name being Canada Commando, she seemed almost startled. Even at that time she seemed to only want to remember her heroic actions instead of the situations around her, such as people being murdered in order for her to receive the items. History alters a bit and perceptions are different based on the people who experience it in the exact moment it is taking place from those who learn of it at a later time. Because of that, exact details may never match up between different witnesses.