“I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago… It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed” -Elie Wiesel. Millions of heads were enforced in the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel was one of the few survivors. Mr. Wiesel survived through the genocide known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust occurred from 1939 to 1945 in Europe. The mass annihilation was lead by Adolf Hitler.
Hitler had one capital goal, to be the ultimate ruler. While Germany was experiencing difficult times, Hitler took the pportunity to use Jews and other parties/groups as scapegoats and blame Germany’s issues on them; this turned the people against them, making the extermination significantly easier. Many deny the manifestation of the Holocaust. The revisionists, Holocaust deniers, believed the Holocaust was a hoax and was over exaggerated. Problematically, revisionists argue the occurrence of the Holocaust is false and out of proportion.
However, the significant amount of evidence found such as physical evidence (documents, pictures, and videos) and personal accounts from witnesses has proven the Holocaust did appen and was not an aggrandizement. Over time, physical data has been collected and analyzed. After the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel wrote his personal accounts he experienced in the Holocaust in his memoir, Night. Mr. Wiesel foretold, “Three prisoners brought a table and some medical instruments. We were told to roll up our left sleeves and file past the table. The three ‘veteran’ prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms.
I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel 42). Therefore, each individual prisoner was assigned a number. These numbers were Hitler’s ay of abolishing all paper traces of prisoners’ essence and stripping away each individual identity. It was as if the Nazis were washing away the colors from their worlds and filling them with darkness. In the Nazis reality, all the internees would now be insignificant numbers. Consequently, it would be as if the prisoners were wiped from existence. Technically there would be no evidence proving Nazis were holding and killing hostages.
After the Holocaust ended, the Nuremberg Trials took place. These trials were held to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. In the 60 Minutes video, The Nuremberg Prosecutor, Ben Ferencz ouches upon the fact that he and his colleagues discovered classified binders in the ruins of the German foreign ministry. Ferencz addressed, “He gave me a bunch of… Of binders; four binders. And these were daily reports from the eastern front– which unit entered which town, how many people they killed. It was classified. So many Jews, so many gypsies, so many others” (60 Minutes 2017).
This clearly demonstrates the monstrosities that came about throughout the Holocaust. Ferencz was able to discover written evidence proving innocent civilians were destructed. Evidently, this portrays the fact that he Holocaust occurred as the killings were documented. Additionally, the situations that developed during the Holocaust were inhumane. As stated in a Wikipedia article, “The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation. (Wikipedia Contributors 2004).
Due to the visual evidence, this authenticates how harshly the prisoners were treated, and further shows the Nazis were acting barbaric and utterly brutal. The prisoners were walking corpses. For this evidence indicates the Nazis were ruthless executioners, and are responsible for the genocide of my innocent citizens, and were doing anything they could to achieve racial purity and domination. Furthermore, not only has there been piles of physical evidence, but there are numerous survivor accounts.
In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, Mr. Wiesel explains the horrid things he witnessed in the concentration camps, “Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never hall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever… the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live… those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. ” (Wiesel 34). Ultimately, Wiesel was deeply scarred from the phenomenon he experienced in Auschwitz and other camps.
The year he endured in the concentration camps would never leave his mind. Hitler and the Nazis caused millions to suffer from no regard for human life. Moreover, as Oprah walked through Auschwitz, a concentration camp, with Elie Wiesel, she construes to the audience, “… liberal factory of death, in the beginning, prisoners here were executed, starved, or worked to death. Soon a faster method of execution evolved, gas chambers. Now able to murder thousands of people at a time. The Nazis have perfected the science of killing” (Oprah 2006). This powerfully manifests the proof of the gas chambers.
Oprah walked through Auschwitz listening and witnessing the repugnance of the camps and the things that developed there. This confirms the Nazis were cold blooded killers following Hitler doing what he said without question. All in all, millions of angelic people were ortured and brutally slaughtered in a way that will never be forgotten. Elie Wiesel was one of the few Holocaust survivors, he was capable of looking death in the eyes before he was liberated.
As an article titles, Author Biography: Elie Wiesel, it mentions only some of the terrors Mr. Wiesel experienced and notifies, “Elie was separated from his mother and sisters immediately on arrival at Auschwitz, but he was able to stay with his father for a year until his father died of dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion at Buchenwald- just months before liberation” (Secondary solutions 2013). This testifies what the Nazis did to families as they tore them apart. The Nazis did not care for the prisoners and had no issues splitting families from one another separating brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers from their kin.
Once Nazis removed the families they were sent to different lines to either be killed or sent to a labor camp. Not only did they rip families from each other, but the Nazis macerated, lacerated, and forced the victims to work until they dropped. Revisionists believe Nazis had “no intention” of the extermination, did not use extermination camps and gas hambers, and the Holocaust was a hoax that was created for Jews and other crowds’ benefit to receive special treatment. Unfortunately, Holocaust deniers are persistently pushing to prove the Holocaust was “over-exaggerated”.
As revealed in a Wikipedia article, “Most Holocaust denial claims imply, or openly state, that the holocaust is a hoax arising out of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other peoples” (Wikipedia Contributors 2004). Granted, Revisionists assertion the Holocaust is a fabrication. Deniers claim the gas chambers did not exist as there was “no evidence” roving their duration, the diary of Anne Frank is a forgery, and that six million deaths are an overemphasis.
In spite of all they claim, Holocaust deniers’ claims are completely incorrect and irrelevant. The bottom line is, there are oceans of evidence justifying the gas chambers were used in the mass extermination, six million were brutally extinguished, forced to work, and starved in concentration camps. Moreover, the abounding testimonies of individual survivors support the Holocaust’s occurrence. All and all, deniers plea the Holocaust was blown out of proportion and was a tall story.
Nonetheless, there is a great deal of solid documentation and survivor accounts justifying otherwise. In the termination, the Holocaust was no inevitable. Many could have objected and fought harder to end it, and many other countries should have stepped in sooner. We, the people of the world, must work as one to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. As we remember the dreadful obliteration, there will always be awareness under the topic of war and humanity. Overall, the strong memories of the mass genocide will live on as we forfend another similar event from taking place.
