Primo Levi

Camp as well as his escape from Germany to Italy Portugal, and eventually the U.S. The book was heavily influenced by Robert Jay Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors as well as the work’s alternative title, The Nature of the Offensive by Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, author of The Truce. The work has been called a “…postmodern unbildungsroman…”…

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, it is necessary to understand exactly what happened and who has absolute authority to explicate those experiences. According to Michael André Bernstein, “one of the most pervasive myths of our era . . . is the absolute authority given to first-person testimony.” He argues that it should not be widely held that survivors have “the most true, the most unmediated, the most trustworthy” testimonies or stories. However, I argue that Bernstein’s assertion of this…

Throughout the era of the Nazi government, most Jewish people were unaware of the existence of Concentration Camps. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany established almost 40,000 camp’s used to imprison millions of victims. Amongst those 40,000 camps were Buchenwald, Dachau, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, and of course, Auschwitz-Birkenau, all of which are the camp’s most students learn about in any world history class. In his book “Night” Ellie Wiesel tells the reader about his first hand experiences…

Paul Celan is perhaps the greatest German-Jewish poet in the twentieth century. He was born in 1920 in Czernowitz, in the Kingdom of Romania (now a part of Ukraine). He was raised in an educated German-speaking Jewish family. He studied medicine at the age of 18 in France, but left early when the German occupied Austria in 1938. He then changed his course of study to learn Romance languages. When the danger spread all over Europe, he tried to warn his family, but it was too late for them to…

Lessons of the Holocaust both summarizes and extends Marrus’ profession as a holocaust historian – one that he labels as “a never ending quest to get to the bottom of things” (Marrus, 2016, p. 174). In the book Lessons of the Holocaust, Michael R. Marrus discusses how the Holocaust, like all important events in history, must be learned, debated and interpreted for new generations. He argues, that there are no set lessons to be learned from the Holocaust since its meaning is not fixed. Marrus…

The Holocaust was the fault of Hitler and the leaders of the Nazi Party, the common bystanders, the military, the affluent, and the world. The Holocaust was a genocide: the mass murder of many minority groups, most predominantly the Jewish population, using concentration camps and other methods. Hitler was the leader of Germany from the early 1930’s to the early 1940’s, the man who started it all, backed by the leaders of his party, these men were the instigators. The common bystanders: the…

ended one of those lives, nor did he light the fires that burned down the villages or cut off the hands of any Congolese person. As Primo Levi, a Jewish poet who survived Auschwitz said, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions”. Though Levi brings up a good point, and Leopold’s functionaries committed terrible acts, they did all of them in the name of King…

Politics is supposed to be an important aspect of a country. In fact, we cannot think of any nation without its political history. Politics really influences the daily life of every person in a country but does not, however; seem to be easy for people to understand. To comprehend politics, people have to seek help from various sources such as media, newspapers, books and especially, public intellectuals who are well renowned thinkers. Public intellectuals are: writers, scientists, teachers, and…

Different Countries, Same Crimes “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions” (Primo Levi). There are common people every day who experiment; however, experiments turn evil when they prove genocidal to races. Throughout history, there have been events which most would like to change or forget; likewise, there are events which are repeated, even though the event…

Saul Friedländer’s momentous work, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination, asserts itself beyond contemporary historical boundaries of Holocaust analysis and representation, culminating his work and presents Friedländer as significantly influential within historical writing. Born into a Jewish family and experiencing the German Occupation within France Friedländer stands as unique amongst Holocaust scholars, whilst this also directly influencing his ground-breaking…