When it was discovered that the bombers were Muslim, it unleashed a fury of racism against Muslims. Even though the actions of the bombers had absolutely nothing to do with a vast majority of Muslims in America who are good, upstanding citizens, the blame quickly generalized to anyone of the Muslim faith (Smith, 2004)
Anyone of Middle Eastern decent was put under the microscope. Now, nearly a decade later, persons of Middle Eastern decent, or who "look" Middle Eastern are more likely to be the target of racial profiling by the authorities (Winston, 2009)
The Rape of Nanking The Rape of Nanking, according to Chinese-American author Iris Chang, is one of the forgotten atrocities committed during World War II. Chang was the child of parents who had survived the Cultural Revolution in China before immigrating to America and the siege of the Japanese Army during the 1930s was an important part of their cultural history (Chang 7-8)
For many, this uncertainty persists today. As one researcher indicates, adult Holocaust survivors regard highly a sense of normalcy (Bender)
Some use black humor to ease an otherwise unbearable situation (Klein). Immediately following liberation, 'an extreme sense of insecurity resulted in the need to search for someone, somewhere, who might by a miracle still be alive' (Eitinger, 1429)
What is not commonly known, however, is the ripple effect currently underway that impacts the second and also the third generation of individuals whose relatives fell victim to the Holocaust. One researcher perceptively stated it as follows: 'the Holocaust continues to contaminate everyone who was exposed to it in one way or another' (Kellermann, 197)
As previously mentioned, adult survivors of the Holocaust exhibit different reactions to their wartime tragedies than their younger counterparts. Some use black humor to ease an otherwise unbearable situation (Klein)
What's more, children tend to feel guilty over their parents' experiences. This is not always the case, however, as 'surveys outside of Israel report the existence of feelings of shame and embarrassment with regard to the survivor parents' (Nathan, 1433)
Zelizer addresses the one-sidedness of the collective Holocaust memory in a chapter of her book entitled, "Collective Memories, Images, and the Atrocity of War." Zelizer quotes the words of scholar Saul Friedlander when she describes photographs of Holocaust atrocities as an "indelible reference point of the Western imagination" (Zelizer 1)
" When the war broke out in 1939 membership to the Hitler Youth became "compulsory for all German children between the ages of 10 and 18." (Dearn and Sharp, 2006) the war breaking out resulted in the induction of more German children into the Hitler Youth
Indeed the very strategic induction into the Nazi ideology and belief system was one in which a creed and pledge to Hitler is given by the youth and then combined with the eugenics framework of 'survival of the fittest' resulted in "a merciless ideology" that "constituted a major point of attraction for adolescents who were searching for certitudes in a swiftly changing and newly structured world, however harshly regimented." (Kater, 2004) III
Women were forced into brothels, often for the purpose of servicing the elite of the German Army, the SS troops. While they were sometimes given a choice, the choice was prostitution or death (Dworkin, 1994)
So then, would Christian religions condone the events of the Holocaust because it was an event sponsored by the German government? The single most horrific act of the Holocaust was the murder of six million people, mainly Jews. The unfortunate fact is that the Vatican and the Pope, as spokesman of the Catholic Church, remained silent and never spoke out against the Holocaust, even though they knew what was happening well before the war was over (Rittner, et
¶ … Jewish Holocaust THE HISTORY and RELEVANCE of the NAZI HOLOCAUST Hitler's Ideals and the Final Solution: Anti-Semitism was the principal doctrine of Nazism and was evident as early as Hitler's original written autobiography Mein Kampf ("my struggle"), authored while he was imprisoned briefly after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1921, more than a decade before rising to power in 1933 (Guttenplan, 2001)
Eventually, this practice was discontinued, mainly because of the psychological toll it took on the soldiers responsible for carrying out the mass murder day after day, but also to conserve ammunition necessary for the war effort. Heinrich Himmler famously was observed to recoil in horror during one of his camp inspections when he ventured close enough to the open pit that when an officer shot a survivor, bits of brain matter splashed onto Himmler's overcoat (Kershaw, 2000; Levin, 1993)
¶ … Jewish Holocaust THE HISTORY and RELEVANCE of the NAZI HOLOCAUST Hitler's Ideals and the Final Solution: Anti-Semitism was the principal doctrine of Nazism and was evident as early as Hitler's original written autobiography Mein Kampf ("my struggle"), authored while he was imprisoned briefly after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1921, more than a decade before rising to power in 1933 (Guttenplan, 2001). Hitler's "Final Solution" was initiated beginning in 1941, although the network of concentration camps through which it was implemented had begun to take shape several years before, being used to exterminate "undesirables" such as the mentally retarded, homosexuals, and political prisoners, as well as Jews, Gypsies, and captured members of the armed resistance in Germany in the early years of World War II (Levin, 1993; Loftus & Aarons, 1994)
" In some occupied areas, particularly in Germany during the earlier war years, the Nazis took great pains to camouflage their plans by publicizing propaganda about "resettlement in the East" in connection with which Jews scheduled for transport were issued instructions for packing their belongings and labeling them to ensure that their bags were not lost during the process. Later in the war, particularly in some of the occupied countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia, no such pretenses were used and Nazi authorities or local authorities complicit with the Nazis simply rounded up Jews on lists or from whatever buildings or neighborhoods were scheduled for liquidation on a given day, marching them at gunpoint to the town square or to the train stations (Morse, 1998)
7). In this context German citizens' decision to support the Nazi party may be viewed as reasonable (within an admittedly ignorant, ill-informed framework), because initially the Nazis "offered an 'imaginative and proactive' economic package that resonated well with their own material self-interest," partially because that package identified Jews and other minorities as the cause of Germany's economic woes (Anheier 1998, p
Thus, perhaps the easiest place to start is actually with the Holocaust's ability to overwhelm and defy examination, because examining this issue will offer some insight into why the explanations of the Holocaust provided by the usual theoretical dualisms and schemas of social theory, among the contributions of other fields, are insufficient. The problem of effectively conceptualizing, and, in the words of one researcher, "fathoming the Holocaust," rests in the fact that the cruelty and brutality of the Holocaust is so far beyond the scope of usual human imagination, even for those people who lived through it (Berger 2002)
However, while this helps to explain some of the basic cognitive and behavioral sources of racism, the nature explanation cannot account for the complex system of ideology and policy that springs up in order to support and perpetuate racist beliefs. In fact, when racism is discussed, the individual act of discrimination based on race is often the least important part; instead, researchers attempt to examine racism "as a set of institutional conditions of group inequality and an ideology of racial domination, in which the latter is characterized by a set of beliefs holding that the subordinate racial group is biologically or culturally inferior to the dominant racial group" (Bobo & Fox 2003, p