Tag Archives: Night

Propaganda

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a page that explores the Nazis’ sophisticated propaganda campaigns and their legacy. Propaganda is biased information designed to shape public opinion and behaviour. The site has a timeline of events and a fascinating gallery of propaganda posters and other images. The exhibit also explores the themes associated with the propaganda.

The museum looks at how intense public desire for charismatic leaders offers fertile ground for the use of propaganda. Through a carefully orchestrated public image of Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, during the politically unstable Weimar period the Nazis exploited this yearning to consolidate power and foster national unity. Nazi propaganda facilitated the rapid rise of the Nazi Party to political prominence. Election campaign materials from the 1920s and early 1930s, compelling visual materials, and controlled public appearances coalesced to create a “cult of the Führer” (leader) around Hitler. His fame grew via speeches at rallies, parades, and on the radio. Nazi propagandists cast Hitler as a military leader, a father figure, and a messianic leader brought to redeem Germany.

You will find the exhibit here.

About Night

Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps.

Night, since it appeared in 1960, has sold over 10 million copies but the book was not accepted at first. In the late 1950s, long before the advent of Holocaust memoirs and Holocaust studies, Wiesel’s account of his time at Auschwitz and Buchenwald was turned down by more than 15 publishers before the small firm Hill & Wang finally accepted it. Night has now became a publishing phenomenon.

Here are extracts from reviews of the book:

Review:

“A slim volume of terrifying power.” New York Times

Review:

“What I maintain is that this personal record, coming after so many others and describing an outrage about which we might imagine we already know all that it is possible to know, is nevertheless different, distinct, unique….Have we ever thought about the consequence of a horror that, though less apparent, less striking than the other outrages, is yet the worst of all to those of us who have faith: the death of God in the soul of a child who suddenly discovers absolute evil?” Francios Mauriac

Review:

“Wiesel has taken his own anguish and imaginatively metamorphosed it into art.” Curt Leviant, Saturday Review

Review:

“The book that always makes me weep is ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, because it brings up emotions of sorrow, horror and anger. And the book that unfailingly cheers me up is also ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, because it shows me that there is never an excuse for not trying to overcome evil, and that there is no situation from which we cannot emerge with a determination to be productive.” Alan M. Dershowitz, Washington Post Book World

Review:

“To the best of my knowledge no one has left behind him so moving a record.” Alfred Kazin

Review:

“As a human document, ‘Night’ is almost unbearably painful, and certainly beyond criticism.” A. Alvarez, Commentary

The Liberation of Auschwitz

The train arrived in the middle of the night, so we were greeted by very bright lights shining down on us. We were greeted by soldiers, SS men, as well as women. We were greeted by dogs and whips, by shouting and screaming, orders to try to empty the train, by confusion… There is no way to describe your first coming to Auschwitz.
—Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the Germans. A complex of camps, Auschwitz included a concentration, extermination, and forced-labour camp. It was located 37 miles west of Krakow (Cracow), near the pre-war German-Polish border.

In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its satellite camps. Nearly 60,000 prisoners were forced to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to march to the city of Wodzislaw in the western part of Upper Silesia. SS guards shot anyone who fell behind or could not continue. Prisoners also suffered from the cold weather, starvation, and exposure on these marches. More than 15,000 died during the death marches from Auschwitz. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered.

To find out more go here to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The National Humanities Medal

In class we have been discussing some of the achievements of Elie Wiesel the writer of  Night. We know he was awarded the Nobel Prize but he has also been recognised for his work in other ways. In 2009 President Barack Obama presented National Humanities Medals to eight Americans for their outstanding achievements in history, literature, cultural philanthropy and museum leadership. Medals were given to historians Robert A. Caro, Annette Gordon-Reed, David Levering Lewis, and William H. McNeill; museum director Philippe de Montebello; philanthropist Albert H. Small; author Theodore C. Sorensen; and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.

Elie Wiesel was awarded the medal for his unwavering commitment to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and its victims. He has fostered compassion and understanding through his writing, his leadership, and his relentless advocacy for human rights.

Night

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever…Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”

Night by Elie Wiesel is a terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonised witness to the death of his family, of his innocence, and of his God.

For an interesting resource to learn more about the Holocaust and genocide try The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.