The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, The Schindlers List and The Book Thief

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Never Forgiving So That We Never Forget in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Schindler’s List and The Book Thief
“Forgiveness lies with the concept of never forgetting why you had to forgive in the first place, and for a devastating moment in history’s sake, we must do just that. Through the dehumanization of innocent people, the preconceived notions within the German perspective (how even if you were German you were sought to have hatred towards Jews), and the resilience of the human spirit throughout times of destruction, it is evident that the Holocaust affected the world in many different ways that should never be forgotten”
The Holocaust is more about the Germans than it is about the death of Jews. Memories of the Holocaust are still fresh, with survivors still existing. The horrors of incarcerating Jews and other people in concentration camps and labeling innocent prisoners, including women and children, with numbers tell a lot about the inhumanity of the Germans. The Germans had also constructed ovens used to burn people while alive and homicidal gas chambers for poisoning people to death. It was an era that saw the deliberate and systematic killing of millions of people, including Jews and other minority groups. Other than the Jews, the Nazis also targeted ethnic Poles, the Romans, Soviet civilians, war captives, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and other opponents of political and religious ideologies. In this case, more than ten million people lost their lives in hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. The Holocaust events have been widely publicized in diverse perspectives. The paper looks into The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Schindler’s List and The Book Thief, which offer more than just publicity of the Holocaust. The three publications question how the Germans, living in a modern, industrialized, and good example of Western enlightenment, ended up committing such unimaginable and unspeakable acts witnessed. The Holocaust had far-reaching effects that saw the reversal of global European colonization and social reforms in the United States (Major 446). It raised many questions about humanity and what human beings are doing to prevent similar atrocities against fellow human beings do not happen again. Should we just forgive the Nazis and forget their role in the Holocaust or forgive them but not forget the Holocaust by ensuring its importance in history for a long time to come?
To begin with, we need to understand who were key participants in fueling hate, incarceration, and killing of Jews and other minority groups in German. It questions the possibility of all Germans collaborating in unison to just kill their fellow human beings. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Bruno’s mother says, “We don’t have the luxury of thinking.” (p. 13). On the second chapter, she tells his son that “some people make all the decisions for us.” (p. 64). Her statements reveal the powerlessness in her inability to directly refer to her husband, who is a Nazi commandant (Gray 112). It further reveals the brutality, power, and influence the Nazis had even against the German civilians. Any German suspected of sympathizing with victims of the Holocaust faced the maximum wrath of the Nazis. According to The Schindler’s List, Goeth is charged with evacuating Plaszow and burning of the bodies of 10,000 Jews who had been killed. Schindler is also aware of how close he and his workers were close to death in the hands of the Nazis. After a successful rescue of thousands of Jews, he has to flee for he will be hunted as a war criminal. Hans tried to help the Jews as they were flogged through Molching on their way to Dachau as illustrated in The Book Thief. As a result of Hans’s action, they had to send Max away from their house in the fear that the Nazis might come to search their house. Max is a Jewish who sought refuge in the Steiner’s house. Eventually, both the Steiners paid for their actions. As we can see some people in the three publications were willing to intervene in saving lives of Jews and other people from the Nazis. But this does not explain why the West took so long to stop the Holocaust.
The Holocaust was a grave moment for many and a disgraceful event for the whole humanity in history. A greater concern and sympathy also goes to those who are living on the same continent or those who have common backgrounds such as race, religion, culture, norms, and values, with victims of the Holocaust in German. Majority developed guilt feelings because Holocaust could have been prevented from happening. But this was not likely because the Western countries had implemented a policy of appeasement in the 1930s. The bitter truth is, the tragedy of the Holocaust took place and the West may never heal their guilt feelings. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Bruno narrates that his father (a Nazi commandant) was not the type of man to give anyone a hug, unlike his mother and grandmother who usually hugged and co...