blogpost 5 - Malcolm

The about the Holocaust has made me more aware of how easy it is for us to turn to evil and believe it’s right. When I was first learning about the Holocaust, the word fear seemed to stand out the most to me. The Germans blamed all of their problems on the Jews because of fear, they put the Jews in ghettos because of fear, or they tried to annihilate all the Jews because of fear. I think it is really important to pay attention to people’s feelings especially feelings like fear and desperation. I feel like we, the world let this happen. We allowed this to happen because of our arrogance. We expected that just because we gave Germany a whole bunch of rules to follow and took some of their land, they would immediately become subordinate to us. And even after the Holocaust we in America allowed things like this happen during the civil rights movement. They’re are some people out there that no matter what you do, will not become good people and it is our job to protect people from those horrible people. I do think that the Holocaust has at least made us aware of this ongoing issue which is a good thing, but there are several steps that we can take to make it less of an issue. For example when Guido was taken to the concentration camp, he met Dr. Lessing whom he had formerly worked for. Though instead of trying to help him escape, he tries to get Guido to help him out with a riddle that turns out to be racist. Being a person who was working with the Germans, it would have been much easier for Guido and his family to escape. But Lessing was really insensitive towards Guido’s situation despite being rather close to him. in the Appelplatz, stood a black gallows. in the Appelplatz, stood a black gallows. We learned that soup would be distributed only after roll call, which lasted longer than usual. The orders were given more harshly than on other days, and there were strange vibrations in the air. "Caps off!" the Lagerälteste suddenly shouted. Ten thousand caps came off at once. "Cover your heads!" Ten thousand caps were back on our heads, at lightning speed. The camp gate opened. An SS unit appeared and encircled us: one SS every three paces. The machine guns on the watchtowers were pointed toward the Appelplatz. "They're expecting trouble," whispered Juliek. We learned that soup would be distributed only after roll call, which lasted longer than usual. The orders were given more harshly than on other days, and there were strange vibrations in the air. "Caps off!" the Lagerälteste suddenly shouted. Ten thousand caps came off at once. "Cover your heads!" Ten thousand caps were back on our heads, at lightning speed. The camp gate opened. An SS unit appeared and encircled us: one SS every three paces. The machine guns on the watchtowers were pointed toward the Appelplatz. "They're expecting trouble," whispered Juliek. As I said before fear played a big role in the this genocide. It seemed that the more fear the Nazis had the, the more intent they were to do more terrible things. in the Appelplatz, stood a black gallows. We learned that soup would be distributed only after roll call, which lasted longer than usual. The orders were given more harshly than on other days, and there were strange vibrations in the air. "Caps off!" the Lagerälteste suddenly shouted. Ten thousand caps came off at once. "Cover your heads!" Ten thousand caps were back on our heads, at lightning speed. The camp gate opened. An SS unit appeared and encircled us: one SS every three paces. The machine guns on the watchtowers were pointed toward the Appelplatz. "They're expecting trouble," whispered Juliek.