Chattahoochee River
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Thoughts on Chapter 1
While reading this chapter, I was, as many of us were, extremely confused about the way the Jews of Sighet were so dismissive of the severity of the situation they faced. Though I'm sure they had their fears, more so it seemed they didn't believe the chaos would reach them directly. As the threat came closer and closer to Sighet, the people continued to act as though everything was fine, and to me it seemed as though they were maybe trying to reassure themselves or their children. Once the Germans and the Hungarian police came, the people still feigned hope, and as they became make and more oppressed, and though they were still acting optimistic, it was clear that there was more desperation and heaviness in their manner. At this point in the chapter, I noticed the diction and tone had shifted and became increasingly heavy, but also had an air of emptiness and disenchantment. Something that stood out to me in this chapter was the way the Jews of Sighet had the facets of their life that marked their humanity taken away from them one by one, from not being allowed to own valuables to having to stay inside at certain times, to being displaced to enclosed, segregated areas. This dehumanization of them came to its peak (at this point) when they were forced into the cattle car. Though the cattle car was a literal object in the story, I also feel that it serves as a symbol that highlights the dehumanization of the Jews.
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Marisa made an interesting point about dehumanization earlier as well. I also like your interpretation of the cattle car as a symbol of this. Do you subscribe to the idea that the German soldiers had been dehumanized by Hitler to a certain extent? I do not see how else they could bring themselves to commit an ethnic cleansing such as the one that occurred during the Holocaust.
ReplyDeleteWhy yes, Andrew, I would have to agree that the German soldiers were also dehumanized through the regime of the National Socialist (Nazi) party. Of course, it's in a different way than the dehumanization that the Jews faced. I feel that the dehumanization the soldiers experienced can help to account for the automatic/systematic way they carried out the duties that were presented to them. Clearly, they had to have been convinced, or perhaps coerced, into following through with the violent acts they so frequently committed, and I think this shows that the way they were dehumanized was in the removal/dismissal of their empathy, compassion, etc. We often identify these traits in "humaneness" or as the positive aspects of humanity, and can agree that treating others without compassion/empathy is dehumanizing for those we treat that way, but I don't feel that we quite recognize that the lack of these could be, in fact, dehumanizing for the people themselves.
DeleteI find your point about hope quite interesting, Marian. Even though I believe hope and optimism are great, I think it got to the point where they were trying so hard to keep hope alive that they ended up ignoring the facts, and the changing times around them. They didn't want to believe that something could go wrong for them, so I think they may have made the conscious decision to not believe it.
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