Bearing Witness Rhetorical Analysis

Bearing Witness Bearing witness, these words read across the top of the entrance of the Holocaust Museum in Houston, Texas. These two words are some of the most powerful, meaningful words many of us will ever hear. This is because if we as witnesses do not remember and continue to reflect on the horrors of the Holocaust, who is to say something similar will not happen again. However, if we stand up and make the voices of those who suffered in the Holocaust or lost their loved ones due to Hitler, then we can insure that a man made tragedy such as the Holocaust never happens again. The civic importance of the Holocaust Museum is to teach all future generations what discrimination leads to. If all generations are not taught and shown the terrifying …show more content…
The lesson from this is that because the hatred had always been there, it was easy for Hitler to pit everyone against them. If more people would have stood up and told Hitler he could not brutally murder and discriminate against not only Jews but many others as well, the mass genocide of the Jews and many more would not have happened. If people would have just realized that they were not better or above these people then perhaps the Holocaust would have never happened. Anti-Semitism is much like the racism we saw during the Civil War in the United States or the Hutu massacre of Tutsis. Even today, we see discrimination all throughout our world. Not only from citizens, but from the media as well, adding onto the threat of prejudice. Instead of focusing on how wrong discrimination is and using their platform to bear witness, the media plays off of it in order to gain more viewers. The media is one of the biggest platforms that there ever will be and instead of using their broadcasts to talk about the importance of diversity they focus on all of the hate crimes that happen daily, when they should be taking a stand and saying they will not broadcast about them but talk about how wrong racism is. The events of the past proves that discrimination can easily lead to the murders of the people thought to be …show more content…
Hearing the stories of the survivors it is much more personal than reading from a text book. Reading a story or text book over the Holocaust is effective but nothing can compare to hearing the real life stories of those who suffered. There is not a single text book that can make you feel the pain and emotion behind the survivors eyes. Emotions speak louder than words. Unless you feel something or are moved by what you are reading, you will probably turn the page and forget all about it. However, once you see the tears and hear the terror in the survivors eyes and voices, no one with a heart could ever forget that. The Houston Holocaust Museum in particular, stands out because the survivors had such a huge hand in making the museum. You can feel all of the emotions the Holocaust victims went through much more readily at the museum as opposed to a text book because of how much heart the survivors poured into it. These survivors are also very important to civic duty because they can attest to the fact that the Holocaust did in fact happen. It is unbelievable but there are people out there that claim the Holocaust never happened. These people can be disproven through the very true stories of those who had to live through the events of the