Holocaust the Man Dangled on Research Paper

The physicality of pain, the hunger, the feces and spit, all the brutalities that served to dehumanize them became precisely what brought the survivors out of the camps alive. Many if not most survivors were purely lucky. All learned how to live with dehumanization: to live while being dehumanized. All were able to resist succumbing to the belief that they were truly inhuman creatures, and all rose above and re-humanized themselves when they re-entered the world. Survivors use the process and act of remembering as the key to rehumanizing themselves. To rejoin the human race, they must remember the compassion and empathy they felt for their fellow prisoners: the images so deftly recalled in Holocaust literature and poetry. Only the stories of survivors exist to recreate the holocaust experience. As Andrei states in "The Last Camp," "our ideas would survive but the Nazi evil wouldn't."

When Gotfryd states, "I couldn't believe I was free again," he realizes fully that it is utterly impossible to be dehumanized. The holocaust victims were tortured but they remained human. It is only possible to dehumanize others. Living with fear, accepting torture while clinging to hope: are signs of humanity. Dehumanization is an act, a crime. The victim never actually participates in his or her own dehumanization unless that person actively commits a dehumanizing act.

Borowski's explicit treatment of the holocaust in This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen details the process of dehumanization and shows how dehumanization depends on segregating the self from the rest of the human race. Denying the unity of the human race and numbing oneself to the pain of others is the only way to dehumanize.On the contrary, sacrificing the self to save others is the ultimate affirmation of human love and survival.

Works Cited

Borowski, Tadeusz., Vedder, Barbara, Kott, Jan, & Kandel, Michael. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Penguin, 1976

The Girl from Auschwitz." From the Black Book. Ehrenburg, Ilya and Grossman, Vasily. Eds. New York: Holocaust Library.

Gotfryd, Bernard. "The Execution," "Hans Burger: #15252." And "The Last Camp." In Anton the Dove Fancier and other Tales of the Holocaust. Washington Square: 1990.

Hamburger, Michael. "Treblinka." In Schiff, Hilda. (Ed) Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1995.

Fogel, Ephraim. "Shipment to Maidanak." In Schiff, Hilda. (Ed) Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1995.

Schiff, Hilda. "Babbi Yar," From Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1995.

Tsirolnitsky, M. "Twenty-Six Months in Auchwitz." In the Black Book. Ehrenburg, Ilya and Grossman, Vasily. Eds. New York: Holocaust Library.

Zyck, Adam. "Auschwitz, 1987." In Schiff, Hilda. (Ed) Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1995.

Gotfryd, Bernard. "The Execution." p. 117

Gotfryd, p. 116

Borowitz p. 122

Borowski, T., This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Introduction p. 15

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Gotfryd, p. 136

Gotfryd, p. 138

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Tsirolnitsky, M. "Twenty-Six Months in Auchwitz." p. 490

Fogel, Ephraim. "Shipment to Maidanek."

Schiff, H.….....