So this is another one of my essays that I wrote for one of my college courses. I thought I would share once again cause I thought it was a sort of relative kind of topic one would blog about.
Humans are capable of many things, but what can we really achieve in times of destruction? Are we still bound by our moral integrity… our sanity? Do our animalistic instincts arise? Do we let go of our intellect and of our conscious mind to do the one thing that all animals strive to do, to survive? The Holocaust, like so many other calamitous events, questions what humans are truly capable of. When we are forced to survive-will our beliefs, our ethics, and our family and friends play a role in our survival? Will we remain human, or will we lose all sense of humanity and be left with our most primitive instincts? Will we become animals? Or will we conquer and assure ourselves that we will find our way? Will love save us?
Eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep, work…is what many people of the Holocaust were left with after being in the prison camps for so long. These prisoners were stripped of their clothes, their belongings, and their human rights. They were put to work, and they were shown just how expendable they were. The soldiers murdered children, women, men, and babies. No one was spared. Do something wrong, and the only thing that waits is death. These humans became mindless machines striving to withstand their torture. They became robots. “The bread, the soup-those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time “(Wiesel 61). Where these prisoners still human? In a biological way they were considered human, but the beautiful mind…the thoughts, the honor, the respect, the dignity…aren’t these qualities also part of what makes us human? These people were treated as objects and nothing more. To the Nazi’s they were nothing more than animals who were needed to complete their work. These humans were stripped of their humanity, of their will, until only one thing remained-perseverance.
After being subjected to so much death, the people became numb to the atrocities they witnessed. The murder of innocents never stopped, and they were forced to be used to it. These humans became living shells of what they had once been. The primal instincts came out, and nothing else mattered. Family was forgotten. Friends were forgotten. Only the desire to survive remained- no matter what the cost. “The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died…His son searched him, took the crust of bread , and began to devour it…When they withdrew, there were two dead bodies next to me, the father and the son” (Wiesel 99). This scene from Night, of a man throwing bread into the wagon, caused a fight to break out among the men. The men were described as “beasts of prey”, and their eyes were filled with “animal hate”. The man that got ahold of the bread was beaten to death by his own son. The son murdered his father for a crust of bread, and the others murdered the son for a chance of getting a piece of that bread. This scene really puts into perspective just how starved, and out of their minds these people were. They had become animals fighting to the death for food. They were so starved and tortured that their minds took over, and all they could think about was the need to feed. There were other instances in the book Night were Elie Wiesel mentions the prisoners fighting against each other, and he also mentions that many of the prisoners betrayed their families in some sort of way-including himself. Elie Wiesel mentions that he ignored his father when he was being beat by an SS officer. “I shall never forgive myself. Nor shall I ever forgive the world for having pushed me against the wall, for having turned me into a stranger, for having awakened in me the basest, most primitive instincts. His last word had been my name. A summons. And I had not responded” (Wiesel 11). Can you imagine…betraying your own family to avoid a beating? We like to think of ourselves as honorable, but if we were in some of these people’s shoes would we truly uphold those values and morals? What are we really capable of in order to guarantee that we pull through with our life…?
The guilt after surviving is also a nightmare. Why did we survive when so many others perished? What makes us so peculiar? Is this our punishment for betraying those that we loved? The trauma that is left, the survivor’s guilt, is inconsolable. Only time will heal, and sometimes time can’t erase the monstrosities that happened. Those officers that were Jewish…how could they follow orders like that? How could they eradicate their own like they were nothing? How could anyone kill…murder like that? The will to live, the fear of death, and the manipulative lies that were told about racial superiority were the cause of this. Fear is a powerful thing. When people are dying at every moment-being shot without mercy, being burned, being experimented on, and being gassed-that makes for really powerful emotions. The way these emotions are harnessed depends on the person. Some lose the will to live. Some lose themselves in their laments for their family and friends. Some seal themselves from all of their feelings. Each deals with the trauma differently, and in that moment we are different beings because some fall to despair while others cling to hope. Some live, some die, some betray, and others are just lost. In the end, only those that experienced the destruction can truly testify to the conditions and the choices made. We are capable of many things, but even we can’t fabricate such emotional turmoil. The guilt lives on in everyone because we created those conditions and those atrocities as a species.
Even with these instances that mark us as animalistic beasts, there are qualities that redeem us. Not all humans are weak minded. There are people out there that refuse to give in to just their primitive qualities. Family union and love is a pillar of strength in the movie, Life is Beautiful. This movie ventures into the love of a family trying to survive the Holocaust. The father, Guido, goes to extreme lengths to protect his son from the atrocities of the concentration camp. Guido also helps reassure his wife that his son and he are safe. Guido invents a game, and he coerces his son into accepting it as fact. “The game starts now. You have to score one thousand points. If you do that, you take home a tank with a big gun. Each day we will announce the scores from that loudspeaker. The one who has the fewest points will have to wear a sign that says “Jackass” on his back. There are three ways to lose points. One, turning into a big crybaby. Two, telling us you want to see your mommy. Three, saying you’re hungry and want something to eat” (Benigni Life is Beautiful). Guido enforces these rules onto his son, going through a lot of trouble to keep him from the real truth. Guido-as a father, as a human, and as a husband-is willing to go through anything to ensure that his son doesn’t learn the truth. He is willing to compromise his life to ensure the survival of his son. He is willing to sacrifice himself. He keeps the pretense of normality to make sure that his son isn’t frightened. Love is a powerful emotion. This emotion keeps Guido and his family strong through their struggles in the camp.
Humans are fragile beings. We are animals, yet there are so many different aspects that set us apart from animals. We are unique. We are strong. We are weak. We are easy manipulated. We are emotional. We are so many distinctive and contradicting things. Each one of us is different, yet we also have underlying currents that make us so similar. We experience a lot together…death, destruction, peace, unity, and nature. We are capable of a lot in both spectrums of good and evil. We are continually evolving, and even with evolution, there is always a chance of another calamity like the Holocaust occurring. We won’t ever be free of evil or corruption because there will always be someone out there willing to wreak havoc and destruction, and it us up to us to understand and analyze why the human mind is so abstract and different. It is up to us to learn of our own capabilities as humans.
Timafa 