Exploration of Nazi Captivity - Essay Example

Exploration of Nazi Captivity TARIK ABBAS CASUTTO TEXTS AND CONTEXTS The phrase Holocaust is by and large used to illustrate the genocide of roughly six million Jews for the duration of the Second World War. Holocaust was a programme of organized and well financed state-execution of the European Jews by the government of Nazi Germany. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi torturous activities were the worst in the period of the Second World War and immediately before then. During the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler awful atrocities were committed. In fact, cruelty, blood shed, and blind brutality were some of the policies advanced by the Nazi in the time of World War II under the regime of Adolf Hitler which led to the Jewish Holocaust; one of the most resolute mass murders in the history of humanity. Making a commenting or offering one’s views on a historical event is always a challenge as one sees things as they are now and can never imagine the extremity of any past situation. It is not adequate still if the same history is provided by an eye witness since human nature will always dictate that there is no absolute perfection. Often certain crucial details, however minor, will be ignored either intentionally or not. The undertaken topic for discussion has been previously addressed in a brief account on “Slavery - Nazi vs. American chattel”. Human history is full of books and records that are painted in bloodshed related to violence of the worst kind in the name of race, ethnicity and religion. It is undoubtedly true and practically provable that Adolf Hitler and slave owners did exploit the unfortunates, using the most tragic inhumane methods. Before Hitler’s death he uttered, “Brutal force has not won anything durable.” Nazi slavery, or American chattel slavery were alternative beats of the same wicked heart, against the races that were at a highly disadvantageous position. Some of these mayhems were administered to the Soviet prisoners of war (Soviet POWs). Actually, the greatest portion of the captives who suffered was the Soviet POWs during the Germany-Soviet War majority of who were of Jewish race. However, the British and American prisoners and Italians for example Yakov; Stalin’s son bore a good brunt of the violence too (Schneiderman & Maller, 1946-1947). Schneiderman & Maller further states that there was arbitrary execution of millions of war prisoners between mid 1941 and early 1942. The most intense massive slaughter for the most part was executed via hunger, publicity, and précis putting to death while confined in German concentration camps (Weingartner, 1996). As far as history can retell the tales of these camps that were established to keep thousands of the European Jews in prison, one finds horrific tales of people who were brutally killed and the massacred; if we may use the term; to eliminate them. Tales of eyewitnesses like the Maus, as well as some other survival stories duly shed light on the activities that went on in those prison camps. It is also vital to visit the tales of how the Roman Empire treated their slaves to compare with Hitler’s mistreatment of the war prisoners. Like Hitler, watching the slaves being tortured and killed was a game that the rulers of the Roman Empire enjoyed the most. Femi Akomolafe, 1994, a review of a book on the survival of a captive from the Auschwitz in 1945 does describe how the slaves were being subjected to inhuman treatment by the Roman Empire. For instance, it fore tells how the slaves entered the gates where the sign read “Arbeit Macht Frei”. Subsequently, they were made to stay in cold rooms for hours, while the rooms were filled with freezing water that reached the ankles. They had to be completely undressed and had to remain naked. Even the shoes were not permitted. While in that condition the barbers were then sent in to shave the heads of all the captives. The men were kept for hours in the same condition and they kept on thinking about their families and what was happening to the females and the babies. According to Primo Livo (1961) a male person would enter and provide some brief information to the Buna, a labour campground of around 10,000 slave prisoners, close to Auschwitz in the Upper Silesia. It is imperative to note that people who had influence or authority over other nations has always managed to impose themselves and their queer whims as well as insane egos on the not so lucky feeble natives. In many cases you realize that such individuals and/or their states instigate wars which lead to vast captivity, imprisonment and mass death of innocent civilians who did not have any participatory role in the war at all. To take these people who were of all ages and sex and then lock them up and gas them to their deaths is highly vindictive and similar to what the Nazi religiously talked and walked in the 1940s. Slavery has always been considered a curse. Whether slavery was with the black slaves or the people in the Nazi camps, the camp prisoners and captives were mistreated under Hitler to the level where humankind and humanity has been dropped to nil. The slavery of the Nazis was about a particular race, the Jews. Germans were obsessed with the perceived phony superiority of their race and as a result developed the false mindset that Jews were responsible for all their tribulations hence their brutal pursuit for they Jews. In terms of nature of the committed massacres and atrocities, it is only comparable to the Nanking Massacre which occurred between the years 1937–1938 and was advanced by the imperial Japanese Army to the then Chinese capital, Nanjing. Nazi Germany was utterly evil and satanic. American slave trade lasted for centuries, as an economic system. However, it bore prolonged psychological effects on both the races. To be fair, it is reasonable to say that the American chattel slavery was purely for the economic exploitation. They mainly worked on plantation farms. On the other hand, Nazi slavery was directed at territorial enlargement which involved attacking and subduing neighbouring nations and beyond. For instance, German’s initial territorial borders were those conventional in the Versailles peace Treaty of 1919 which was signed between Germany and her Allies (Britain, the United States, France, Italy, Japan e.t.c) at the World War I end (Keegan, 1989). These borders later changed and enlarged after Germany reclaimed full control of Saarland, Memelland as well as Rhineland and by extension seized Bohemia and Moravia, Austria and the Sudetenland. Keegan (1989) further declares that Germany extended to form the Greater Germany throughout the World War II. Nazis intensively and extensively applied the system of forced labor on prisoners of war and then sent them to extermination camps, which were the killing field most execution were done by shooting or gassings (USHM, June 1941 – January 1942). The prisoners were also laboured to death by the Nazi mainly working in coal mines, agricultural farms and metal industries. The American chattel slavery was less brutal comparatively. Germany wanted to rule over the world in a unique method not known in history. Slave labor was one of the tools employed for the destruction of those conquered by Hitler. In the Nazi slave camps, human beings were treated like animals. Forced migration and massacre was brutally practiced in the territories conquered. Physical and moral degradation was thoroughly pursued. During transportation of the slaves and captives in the trains for example, the there was state violations of human body. witness testimonies declares that there were worst acts of degradation which involved feces, beheading, gutting, urine, body parts, impaling, sawing, raping suffocating hanging and burning (Gigliotti, 2009). In the camps any forms of happiness to these slaves and captives were things of the past. It can be related to what the Japanese did to the Chinese in 1937-1938 which mainly led to torture, carnage, and rape that happened during the Nanking Massacre in Nanjing, china. In the Nanking Massacre there further were such acts as live burials of captives, mutilation of bodies, "death by ice", "death by dogs" as well as "death by fire". In the Nazi German’s case, the whole lot of killing happened in their lives so suddenly. The world was actually shocked and appalled at the mad dream of Nazis. Indeed they murdered the rule of law. Both the Nazi Germany and the Nanking Massacre were similar in nature. However, the Nazi’s was large in magnitude and duration. Nazi killed at least about 6 million people whereas in the Nanking Massacre about 430,000 Chinese civilians got slaughtered in cold blood (Chang). In his article on “Jewish Holocaust or German Holocaust? Auschwitz Gas Chambers Myth”, Kollerstrom explains the “Arithmetic of Annihilation”. t he number slaves subjected to forced labour promptly increased from only just 150,000 in 1942, to the crest of 631,000 in the summer of 1944. This development arose because early in 1942 the war had bogged down compelling Hitler to order for better treatment of the Soviet POWs (USHMM, January 1942 through May 1945). To Hitler, subjecting one to forced tortuous labour was a better treatment. According to Nor, in his article, Soviet Prisoners of War: Forgotten Nazi Victims of World War II, the slaves laboured as they slowly toiled to death. In fact, during forced labour, not less than 200,000 Soviet POWs died. Their bodies were disposed of through cremation, individually. Interestingly however, the accounts for the fuel that had been consumed within the time frame of “February 1942 – October 1943” for the burning ovens show that about “five thousand bodies” were cremated at that time. Kollerstrom (2008) writes that there were concurrences with the figure of recorded, dead inmates, vis-à-vis those who had died from natural causes and had to be subjected to cremation rather than being buried since there emerged the great epidemics of typhoid. Although few but there were survivors from these deadly camps that were set in Auschwitz in Poland and in other places as well and some of who gave witness testimonies. A newspaper article written by such a survivor was published in “The Lewiston Daily Sun” in 1945. The story is narrated by the person himself as he was taken a prisoner. He was captured in Libya and then after 2 years was rescued by the Americans who had been able to scan the area near the camp where he was kept and how he swam to their side and they saved him. There are a number of other similar accounts and some that have not been brought to the light which tell the sufferings of the captives of the Nazi’s. What went through the minds of those prisoners and the effects that it may have had on the survivors are near impossible for any normal person living in normal circumstances to understand and relate to. Witztum & Malkinson, (2009) stated in an article that has been published in the Journal of Trauma and Loss by the title of “Examining Traumatic Grief and Loss Among Holocaust Survivors” that: The mechanism of repression of traumatic memories surrounded and silenced the survivors and those close to them, and the agony and grief began to dissolve only many years after the end of World War II. Almost an entire generation passed by before we dared to fully acknowledge and actually mourn the death of 6 million Jews. They further write that to disregard the aspect of collective working via trauma and loss, it is never astonishing that for an elongated time period survivors’ failure to mourn was mistakenly considered as a pathological grief. Conclusion: In an article published on the net “Inside a Nazi Death Camp, 1944” (www.eyewitnesstohistory.com; 2004) an explanation of how the slaves were taken to their death has been described at best leaving a lot of thoughts in ones mind. The article explains how the camp, that was built by Hitler, had several rooms or gas chambers made in which in one go nearly 2000 men, women or children could be sent to their deaths. These gas chambers had no light and each box could accommodate around 200 – 250 people. The procedure that has been explained is quite horrifying as it entails the group to be put in these chambers without any clothes. Standing naked with each other without any light or anyone to tell them what was happening only; fear and thoughts of one’s family and children would be passing through their minds. Amidst the cries the sudden feeling that there was something in the air that was making people faint around them and supposedly dying too. Within minutes the room goes silent as all the people in it have been gassed! They die leaving the next lot to come in and the same thing happens again. What can be crueler? The people who have survived these horrors, and whose luck saved them from this horrible death still bear the marks on their souls and even after years have passed they still remember what it was like; the horrible nightmare that they luckily survived from. References Book by Author: Primo Levi - Survival in Auschwitz. Chang. The Rape of Nanking, pp. 103-104 Chattel slavery - Hutchinson encyclopedia article about Chattel ... – Retrieved on February 28,2010.> Douglass, Frederick (Author) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave Written By Himself. Harry Schneiderman and Julius B. Maller, (1946-1947). American Jewish Year Book. ed Vol. 48. Press of Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1946, page 599. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=19288dat=1945033&id=; viewed on March 17, 2010, “Rescued Writer tells Story of Nazi Captivity” “Inside a Nazi Death Camp, 1944" EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2004). Jewish Holocaust or German Holocaust? Auschwitz Gas Chambers Myth; by Nicholas Kollerstrom; http://jewsvszionists.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/jewish-holocaust-or-german-holocaust-auschwitz-gas-chambers-myth/ Journal of Loss and Trauma, 14:129–143, 2009 Examining Traumatic Grief And Loss Among Holocaust Survivors; Eliezer Witztum, Ruth Malkinson Keegan, John (1989), The Second World War, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand: Hutchinson. Nor, J. Soviet Prisoners of War: Forgotten Nazi Victims of World War II. TheHistoryNet. Simone Gigliotti (2009). The Train Journey: Transit, Captivity, and Witnessing in the Holocaust. Studies on War and Genocide Volume 13 of War and genocide. Berghahn Books. USHM (June 1941 – January 1942). The treatment of Soviet POWs: Starvation, disease, and shootings, USHMM. (January 1942 through May 1945). Forced labor: Soviet POWs Weingartner, J. (3/22/1996).War against subhumans: comparisons between the German War against the Soviet Union and the American war against Japan, 1941-1945., Read More