“We Will Never Forget- Auschwitz” is one of the touching poems written by Alexander Kimel. It depicts the horrifying experience of the Holocaust from the Jews’ perspective. To begin with, “Auschwitz” is an allusion to a concentration camp established by the Nazis in 1940 in Poland and it became an extermination camp in early 1942 (“Glossary of Terms”). This camp witnessed the miserable life of the Jews during that period as well as their extermination. The title of the poem makes it clear that the Jews are angry and psychologically hurt up till now because of the painful experience they suffered from. Consequently, they will never be able to forget what happened. The poem deals with many ideas to justify the choice of that title. The main idea …show more content…
Here, Kimel is making fun of the Nazis who spend six days a week killing innocent people and then go to Church to hypocritically praise God as if they were God-fearing human beings. At the end of the poem, Kimel uses intertextuality as an evidence to prove that Hitler is an immoral person. “Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles!” (33), which means Germany, Germany above all, “was probably said by Hitler when justifying the slavery and murder of the Jews” (“Analysis”). The poem is rich in the images of the senses which aid the reader to imagine this terrible massacre. By employing an auditory image in “Babies wailing from hunger” (8), Kimel evokes sympathy. The Nazis even tortured those innocent babies who needed nothing but tenderness. He also uses an organic image in “Fathers shaken with helpless rage” (10), which depicts the complete sense of loss of control, fear and rage that the Jews suffered from. However, these feelings were helpless at that time. They were repressed inside their souls. The Jews were killed in brutal ways such as shooting or gassing them: “The people become a twisted load / Of intertwined limps and heads glued with blood.” (20-21). Through this image which tackles the sense of vision, one can see those dead people covered with blood which is very pathetic and
In today’s society, people tend to view the Holocaust as a horrible thing that happened and it won’t happened again. But nobody really understands fully what it meant to go through it, except for Holocaust survivors. Unfortunately, they were hesitant to share those moments that forever changed them. Elie Wiesel is not one of those people. As the author of the memoir Night, he uses repetition and imagery to try to fully express the amount of terror and suffering that they had to go through during the Holocaust.
In Plath’s poem she frequently uses figurative language about Nazis and the Holocaust. Plath depicts herself as a victim by saying she is like a Jew, and her father is like a Nazi. Plath uses a train engine as a metaphor for her father speaking the German Language, and also to depict herself as a victimized Jew being taken away to a concentration camp.
Despite seeing many other hangings while in the camp, Wiesel notes that the death of the young boy was the only time any of the prisoners wept (Night, pg. 63). Throughout the book, it is seen that victims of the Holocaust were starved, overworked, beaten, and faced with death on a daily basis, yet many remained emotionless. In Wiesel's words, “These withered bodies had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears,” (Night, pg. 63) The prisoners had distanced themselves from emotions in order to survive the unfathomable conditions they lived in. Many became so unfeeling that they could watch thousands die daily without showing any signs of grief of sorrow. However, when the inmates witnessed the hanging of an innocent child, they were not able to deny their sadness any longer. They were left heartbroken and in tears. Although entire towns were murdered daily in the gas chambers, watching a child die at such close proximity was too much for the prisoners to handle, and their emotional distress could not be controlled. Their reaction marks a turning point in which they finally realized the severity of the horrors around them, as they could no longer mask their feelings. When Wiesel says “That night, the soup tasted of corpses,” he is demonstrating how the hanging caused him to feel the presence of death no matter where he was (Night, pg. 65). The daily ration
The next few moments of my life after my arrival to Auschwitz happened in rapid succession and yet I know if I live a hundred years I will never forget a single second. Although I don’t know if I will live. We didn’t know the place to which we came, but I know only too well what it is
“Holocaust remembrance depicting the horrors of Auschwitz, published in 1960, to forget would not only be dangerous but offensive to forget the dead would be akin to killing theme a second time.” It tell about The Danger of Forgetting And The Imperative of Remembrance. “Their race, religion or political views,
The holocaust is one of the world's most tragic events, approximately 6 million Jews died and the concentration camp Auschwitz is the world's largest human cemetery, yet it has no graves. In Elie Wiesel's autobiographical memoir Night, he writes about his dehumanizing journey in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Firstly, Elie experiences the loss of love and belonging when he is separated from his mother, sisters, and eventually his father. Also, the lack of respect that the Nazis showed the prisoners which lead to the men, including Elie to feel a sense of worthlessness in the camp. Finally, the lack of basic necessities in the camp leads to the men physically experiencing dehumanization. As a result, all these factors contribute to the
The two poems “Never Shall I Forget” and “We Remember Them”, written by Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Sylvan Kamens, have their fair share of similarities and differences. These poems are both highly influenced by the Holocaust, the genocide of over 11 million people, 6 million of them being Jews, during World War II. In “Never Shall I Forget”, Elie Wiesel talks of his sufferings in a concentration camp and “We Remember Them” pass on the memory of those who died during the Holocaust. “Never Shall I Forget” and “We Remember Them” both have a shared theme of remembrance, but Elie Wiesel wrote of what he would rather forget than remember, whereas Rabbi Sylvan Kamens wrote of what he wishes to never forget.
In the American memoir, Night, Nobel Peace Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel constructs a story about the horrific events he endured during the Holocaust. In the pages of this memoir, he portrays the life of Eliezer, a child born Jewish. In the later chapters of the book, Eliezer endures the tragic hanging of a pipel who lost his life for not giving up the names of the inmates that worked to sabotage the power plant at Buna, a forced labor camp in Germany. The guards forced Eliezer and his father to walk past the child as he hung from the gallows stuck between life and death. The death of the child signifies the death of Eliezer’s faith. The author used this position in the memoir to signify the end of the main character’s religious views, which makes this the climax of the book. The climax fits into the structure of the memoir at this point by staying consistent in word choice and advancing the plot further. The use of the appeals and tone also ties this scene into the plot. However, each translation utilizes these devices differently. The scholar’s translation focuses on ethos, logos, and a helpless tone. Marion’s translation uses pathos and a bitter tone. Marion’s version more effectively uses the appeals and tone because it conveys more emotion to the reader.
Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.
Throughout the novel and connection, specific diction is used to express the hatred the Germans felt towards the Jewish during the Holocaust. In the connection “A Spring Morning”, the author uses words such as: “cruel”, “torment” and “murder” to show how the humiliation and fear within the Jews. Each of these words demonstrates a sense of inhumane acts of terror, for example, to be cruel to someone/ something means to be unnecessarily mean or evil. Fink also portrays the Jews as becoming dehumanized emotionally. The Jewish are “terrified” and in “despair” of the German officers and do not know what will become of themselves once they are taken to the camps. The Germans have the Jewish detained and frightened, like caged animals, making them feel more animalistic than human.
In his memoir “Night”, Elie Wiesel gives his account of events that took place during the holocaust. Historical records confirm that the holocaust was an undesirable experience for the victims who had to go through physical torture. In his memoir, Wiesel gives gruesome accounts of the different threats prisoners faced at the Nazi concentration camp. Clearly, the psychological threats seemed to wear the prisoners down more than the physical ones, nevertheless, the prisoners adopted physical unresponsiveness and emotional numbness to protect themselves from both threats, however, Wiesel carefully selected the two execution scenes to strengthen the pathos of his memoir, and to show that sometimes even emotional numbness fails to shield one from
Millions of people were killed during the Holocaust. They suffered from diseases and starvation, labored to death, and murdered in concentration camps. In experiencing the terrors of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel describes his dreadful experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. Everybody goes through situations and experiences that affect them in some way, perhaps even change them. This intense story not only indicates the horror of the concentration camp experience; it shows many important examples of literary devices and reveals certain themes of the excerpt. The way Wiesel uses these devices and themes help create an overwhelming effect on the story. Wiesel talked about the camp using pathos to express how their lives were full of darkness. There were many quotes that gave readers a sense of sympathy. For instance, the quote “I witnessed other hangings. I never saw a single victim weep. For a long time, those dried-up bodies had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears” (572). This particular quote shows that they were hopeless about everything and their lives were never getting better. The way Wiesel specifies this emotional feeling is definitely the strongest, without a doubt. It appears to be practically unreasonable for a reader not to cry about the way Wiesel describes the things he goes through.
In both Elie Wiesel’s, Night and the excerpt from Rudolf Vrba’s, I escaped from Auschwitz, a sense of desolation and callousness loomed throughout each biography. The figurative language and diction in each autobiography illustrate the camps to be horrific and dismal. Wiesel’s creates a powerful tone of despair through vividly harrowing imagery. When describing the conditions of the camp prison life, Wiesel uses exaggerated painful imagery to produce the atrocious experience, and create the hopeless tone. To express the weather was cold and fierce Eliezer claimed the “glacial wind lashed us like a whip”(Wiesel 77).
While Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy subjugated to the violence of the Holocaust in Night, embarks on his atrocious journey in struggling to survive the brutality perpetrated on him, he loses his innocence in the traumatic circumstances. Wiesel’s main aspiration of writing about his development from childhood to adulthood is to showcase how cruelty within society can darken innocents’ souls. As Elie grows throughout the story, he starts to understand that he has changed from a pure, little child to a young man filled with distress and thoughts of danger. He reflects over what kind of individual he has evolved into because of the all the killings and torture he has witnessed: “I too had become a different
Over six million innocent lives were taken during the Holocaust. It had a significant effect on much of the world’s population, and it still has an impact to this day. In Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Daddy”, she shows her emotions for her father, Otto Plath. Sylvia Plath lost her father at eight years old when she still had much love for him (Famous People “Biography”). After a number of years, hatred is built up inside of Sylvia towards her father. When her father first died, she loved him and she grieved over her father’s death. After years of confusion, she eventually decided and wrote, “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (Line 80). In “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, the author resents her father and husband so much that they are comparable to Nazi Germans, showing her feelings for them through poetic devices.