Final

                  Growing up, writing has never been my strongest suit. This semester in English 10/10 I have learned a great amount of insights that I will be able to take throughout the rest of my education and career. In many ways, I have become a stronger and better writer.

                  The biggest thing I took from this class is how important it is to deeply know about your subject before writing anything about it. Previous to this class, I always struggled writing papers and coming up with valid points to put in it. Thanks to this class, I learned that most of this was lack of my knowledge on the subject. Having the blog posts this semester to go along with my major papers helped me out tremendously. I felt like I knew almost everything there was to the subject, and I had so much more to build on in my papers. Learning how to be prepared and knowledgeable about my subject has improved the accuracy of my writing tremendously.

                  In my writing, and in life in general I have always had an issue with paying attention to the “little things.” My favorite part of this class was when Professor Smith would give us quick hits. These were usually easy and simple tricks to enhance the grammar and accuracy of your writing. These were a huge eye opener for me, and made me realize that the smallest changes can make such a difference in your writing.

                  Overall, I enjoyed the structure of this class, and I feel much more confident in my writings. Professor Smith had great insight, and it was definitely a class that I am going to be able to take throughout the rest of my education.

The End of World War II- Atomic Bomb Dropped in Hiroshima

                  Ever since 1940, the United States were working on developing an atomic weapon, after being warned by Albert Einstein that Nazi Germany was already working on conducting research into nuclear weapons. By the time the United States had perfected and conducted the first successful test, Nazi Germany had already been conquered. While this aspect to the war had already been gone and done, the war in the pacific against Japan was still raging on.

                  After a great amount of thought and planning, President Truman had come to the realization that if the U.S. attempted to invade Japan, they would suffer many great casualties. They came to the conclusion that their new and improved weapon could be used to end the war quickly. On August 6, 1945 Enola Gay (American bomber) dropped a five-ton bomb over the city of Hiroshima. The blast equivalent of this bomb had the power of 15,000 tons of TNT. This bomb killed 80,000 people on the spot. Tens of thousand people passed away the following weeks with radiation poising and wounds in result to the bombing. Three short days later, another bomb dropped on Nagaski, another Japanese city. This bomb killed nearly 40,000 people on the spot, almost double the amount from the first bombing. In result to this, Japan ended up surrendering two short days after this event.

               

               Following the end of World War II, many historians looked into the actual thought process of the atomic bombs. They came to the conclusion that there were 2 objectives that played into the goal of them. The first objective was quite obvious. America used the atomic bomb method as a way to end the war with Japan as quickly as possible. The second could come as a shock to many people. This objective was to show off their new weapon of destruction to the Soviet Union. By the year of 1945, the bond between the Soviet Union and the United States had been degraded. America had hoped that the drop of this atomic bomb might create diplomatic leverage. In result to this, they dropped the bomb in Japan, and in a way started the Cold War. In 1949 the Soviet Union had developed their own model of an atomic bomb and there began the nuclear arms race.   

Argumentative Paper: Holocaust Hoax

          Around one million children’s lives were taken during the horrific events that took place during the Holocaust. Young, innocent kids, with potential of bright futures, had their lives stripped from them with no real cause at hand. The Nazi’s of 1945 took terrorizing to a whole new extreme that would never be accepted in today’s society. However, were they really the ones to blame for the cruel series of events against the Jews? Did this time period actually entail everything that has been said of it? Yes: the events of the Holocaust were alarming to many and should be considered a historically important time period. They cannot and should not be called a “hoax.”

The Holocaust is known as the total of all anti-Jewish action shown by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Many journals, articles, and personal interviews with survivors show that it was a very traumatizing experience for those involved. However, a great amount of the population throughout the world today believe that everything about it was a hoax. Holocaust denial is a way of attempting to negate the clearly established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry (Yelland, 551). They have taken issues, twisted them around, and gotten people to believe that many aspects related to the Holocaust are fake.  Citizens are using this as a form of propaganda to reduce the public sympathy towards the Jews, to undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel (believed to be created in compensation for Jew suffering), and to draw attention to particular issues or viewpoints. While Americans are subject to the freedom of speech and can say whatever they please, denying and convincing people that this traumatizing event was not real is immature and unacceptable.

            Believers of the Holocaust fraud say that the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp never actually existed. They say that there are no autopsy reports of any Nazi gassing victims from any western doctors. The argument was made that while there were thousands of corpses available in the concentration camps by the end of the war, and while up to 1,000 autopsies were performed “none showed any evidence of death by poison gas or poison.” However, with much evidence, the gas chambers were a real tool and caused the death of many Jews imprisoned in the German camps. How do we know that the Germans did indeed use the gas chamber method? For one, many written documents have been provided as evidence against this scam. This includes items such as orders for Zyklon-B gas, and blueprints/ orders for building materials for the crematories. Another important aspect when proving they were real are the eyewitness testimonies given by not only diaries of survivors, but the confession of guards and commanders stationed at these camps. One of the most horrifying testimonies came from an SS officer Kurt Gerstein, who gave an account from when he visited the death camps Treblinka and Belzec in August of 1942. During this visit he was a witness to the mass gassing of men, women, and children. While he knew what was going on there, he was still shocked by what he had seen. Gurstein stated, was one of the handful of people who had seen every corner of the establishment, and certainly only one to have visited it not as an enemy of this gang of murderers and not agree…” This was only one of many first person experiences shared about the tragic deaths of many through the gas chambers. If the written documents and eyewitness testimonies aren’t enough, there are also many photographs of not only the camps, but the “secret photos” taken of the burning bodies and smuggled out of Auscwhitz to top it off, and prove the gas chambers played a tremendous role in the death of many Jews during the Holocaust.

            Believers of the “Holocaust Hoax” also try to make their argument seem valid by throwing the United States under the bus, and stating that cremation is not bad, and is used on a daily basis in America. While crematory is a common method of saving your loved ones, it is not used in the same form today that it was during the Holocaust. In today’s society, cremation is used as a more convenient way of keeping a precious person close to you no matter what the circumstance. It can be kept close to one’s heart, and also kept very sacred. The Crematoriums located in the concentration camps could rotate around 1,440 corpses within 24 hours (Caldwell, 13). There was no “savoring” during this process. They argue that cremation is the number one most recommended way to dispose of corpses, in order to prevent the spread of many contagious diseases through ground water. Yet, if these innocent people were not put through the gas chamber and murdered against their own will, there would be no need to dispose this extreme amount of corpses “efficiently.

Another argument made as to why it should be considered a fraud, was that there was an “enormous amount of holocaust survivors.” They argue that the numbers are well into the hundreds and thousands even sixty years after the war. Why would there be that large of an amount of holocaust survivors if the Nazis were going into it with the thought process of solely, “exterminating the Jews?” This train of thought is where many people in the world today go wrong. As of the year 2003, there were 1,092,000 holocaust survivors still alive and well throughout the world (Gutwein, 37). When the Nazi’s first transferred all of the Jews to these petrifying concentration camps, their goal was to “herd them like sheep” and keep them out of the way of the Germans society. As time went on, the conditions of these camps just grew worse and worse. The gassing chambers were being built, and the Nazi’s turned this into what some may call a “playing game.” While they may not have intended to exterminate the Jews from the beginning, the outcome of the camps was used for one purpose- and one purpose only. For the ones fortunate enough to make it out alive, their lives would never be the same from that point on. They were beaten and tortured to the point that getting sent to the gas chamber sounded more pleasing than being alive (Rosenfel, 83). This became the Nazi’s goal, to make sure that the Jews were in misery, and they did whatever it took to make them feel this way.  In an interview with Theodore Hass (holocaust survivor) he talks about the steps taken by the Nazis to de-humanize people and make them feel hopeless:

“If you had treated an animal in Germany the way we were treated, you would have been jailed. For example, a guard or a group of them would single out prisoner and beat him with canes or a club. Sometimes to further terrorize a prisoner, the guards would form a circle around a prisoner and beat him unconscious. There were cases of a prisoner being told to report to the Revier (“Hospital”) and being forced to drink a quart of casor oil. Believe me, this is a lousy, painful, wretched way to die. You developextreme diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, and sever dehydration. If the Nazis wanted you to live and suffer more, they would take measures to rehydrate to victim” (Zelman, para. 7).

That is just one answer, from one interview out of many people declaring the pain and agony they felt while being imprisoned in these camps. While they may have made it out of the camps alive, they were tortured then and are still tortured today with the memories of the pain and sorrow they went through at that point in their lives.

            There is plenty of evidence available to any person who wants to find it, showing why the Holocaust happened, and why it was very important to history. Some do not agree with this and like to believe that everything about the Holocaust is very deceiving. It may be hard to believe that some humans would find it acceptable to torture other humans for no apparent reason. Gas chambers, crematories, and all the stories of the trials these Jews were put through could be a very difficult concept to grasp. No person today would like to think that any other human would get to a point in life where they feel that it is adequate to put someone through that much torment- for no apparent reason at all.  However, there was a time period in this world that doing this was made acceptable. Every event associated with the holocaust were very much real, and changed the lives of many people, then and now. The Holocaust should never be looked over or labeled a “hoax:”. It has a very significant and unwavering place in history, and will live in people’s hearts and minds forever.

Holocaust Survivors- video review

                  The Holocaust is an event that will live in people’s minds forever. Everyone has learned about it as some point in their lives, hence showing how important it is in history. While learning about it, many people feel for the humans that were actually involved with this tragic event. Most people could never imagine what it would actually be like to be involved in something as horrific as this. Assembly Access created a video of interviews from survivors telling their personal thoughts and experiences from being kept in a Nazi concentration camp.     

                  About six million Jews were murdered throughout the time period of the Holocaust. After released from the concentrations camps, many were lost and did not know where to take their lives from there. Everything they had was stripped of them. Their houses, clothes, food, and belongings were all gone and out of their reach at that time. Many of the survivors fled all throughout Europe to try and rebuild their lives. Some of the survivors also made the trek to settle in California. The remaining survivors were children when the Nazis, lead by Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany. Recently, the California State Assembly, lead by John A. Perez honored the survivors and sponsored a special day of remembrance for these victims. Some of these honorees told their story is the following video.

                   I thought that this video was very powerful. It gives you a different perspective and a reality of how brutal these series of events really were. In the video it states that these survivors, who were children at the time experienced things that will never leave their minds, they will be scarred for as long as they live. Something that stuck out to me was when he said that “there was no hiding the fear that my parents and grandparents were showing.” This impacted me and made me realize, that they were truly scared. They knew that they had done nothing wrong but that the Germans were not going to let them off easy. A good amount of the survivors shared their experiences with wearing the gold star on their clothing. It made them feel uncomfortable and unwanted.  If they did not wear this star, they would get deeply punished-sometimes even to the point of death. Little did they know this was nothing compared to what they were about to experience in the concentration camps. They got on to explain their experiences while in the camps. It was heart breaking for me to watch these people try to tell their story without crying or showing what their real emotions were. I think this added to the video because it made all of the viewers realize how hard this still is for them, even though it happened when they were just children. Overall, I enjoyed this video and I gained a deep gratitude for the survivors who can bare the pain enough to share it with everyone else.