Aura Chiriboga

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DBQ Essay
Question:
To what extent and in what ways did the Holocaust influenced society after World
War II?
Background information:
During World War II, concentration camps were created to maintain the order
in the society of the world. The treatment given to Jews, Gypsies, blacks,
intellectuals, and people, who in a certain way threatened the Nazi Party, was
persecuted throughout Europe. At the end of the war, the Allies liberated the
people in the concentration camps all over the European continent. Before that,
the SS guards translated prisoners to different camps in what they called death
marches. The ones that survived this Holocaust lost many people they knew and
cared about. The amounts of deaths were shocking to the people all over the
world.
















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Document 1:




Document 2:



















This is a great day and its greatness is meaningful to you, survivors, for it symbolizes our victory
over forgetfulness, thus saving the victims from a second death. ()
Granted, your role in its existence is not unique. Others have taken part in it. From the very
beginning, when the idea of the project has hardly been formulated, we received from both the White
House and Congress their enthusiastic support. ()
() No one is as open to gratitude as we are. For us, every gesture is an offering, every dawn filled
with grace. We watch a child, ours, and we see our parents. And we would give that child all that was
taken away from us.
However, in the spirit of the stock-taking solemnity of the occasion, we recall, not without
melancholy, the early days of your arrival in this blessed land. You were received without fanfare and
ceremonies. No festive dinners were offered in your honor. No speeches, no presents. As if society had
told you: You are alive, that ought to be sufficient.
Not long ago, when liberated prisoners or hostages returned home, they were celebrated by the
entire nation. And that was and is the right thing to do. But that was not done when traumatized
survivors from Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Majdanek and Ponr finally landed on these shores. Of
course, you obtained sympathy and compassion from various quarters; many good people assisted
you in rebuilding your lives and your hopes on the ruins of a shattered past. But most of the time you
evolved in a closed circle inhabited by your former comrades: invisible walls separated survivors from
the rest of the nations.
In the beginning, you so wanted to share your memories from others. But they refused to listen. Do
not look backwards, people told you. It is unhealthy. Turn the page; the future is waiting for you. Then,
you stopped trying, you would just whisper: Whats the use? Anyway, you wont understand.
Do people understand now? Now, at least, they realize that this is the placetogether with Yad
Vashem in Jerusalemwhere one can come close not to the Event itself, that is impossible, but to its
dark and fiery gates.
Much before the Museum was built I was asked what my hopes had been for its impact. Anyone
entering it, I said, should not leave it unchanged. Here children and adults learn that Good and Evil are
part of the human condition, and they can be infinite. Here we learn that the loneliness of victims, their
sense of abandonment, their silent despair as they walked, in nocturnal procession towards the flames,
are not to be forgotten; they must leave a trace, a burning scar on mans history, on its memory, and
Gods as well.
Surrounded by your children and grandchildren, fellow survivors, do you feel joy in your hearts? If
so, it is not void of sadness; it cannot be. And yet, and yet. Close your eyes and see the invisible faces
of those we have left behind, or have left us behind as witnesses.
Our presence here today is our answer to their silent question: we have kept our promise.
We have not forgotten.
Speech in the Tribute to Holocaust Survivors commemorating the ten years of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum (November 2, 2003) by Elie Wiesel.
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Document 3:
























Between January 1933 and December 1941, 104,098 German and Austrian refugees arrived
in America, of whom 7,622 were academics and another 1,500 were artists, journalists,
specialising in cultural matters, or other intellectuals. The trickle that began in 1933 swelled after
Kristallnacht in 1938, but it never reached a flood. ()
In addition to the artists, musicians, and mathematicians who were brought to America, there
were 113 senior biologists and 107 world-class physicists (). Scholars were also helped by a
special provision in the U.S immigration law, created by the State Department in 1940, which
allowed for emergency visitor visas, available to imperiled refugees whose intellectual or cultural
achievements or political activities were of interest to the United States. Max Reinhardt, the
theater director, Stefan Zweig, the Writer, and Roman Jakobson, the linguist, all entered the
United States on emergency visas.
Of all the various schemes to help refugees whose work was deemed important in the
intellectual sphere, none was so extraordinary, or so effective, as the Emergency Rescue
Committee (ERC) organized by the American Friends of German Freedom. The Friends had been
formed in America by the ousted German socialist leader Paul Hagen (also known as Karl Frank),
to raise money for the anti-Nazi work.
() One of the committee`s members, Varian Fry, was chosen to go to France, to find as
many threatened intellectuals as he could and help them to safety.
() Meanwhile he set up his own clandestine network, using several members of the French
underground, which transported selected refugees out of France into Portugal, where, with a visa,
they could sail to America. He found a safe house, the Villa Air Bel, just north of Marseilles, and
there he equipped his refugees with false documents and local guides who could lead them via
obscure and arduous pathways across the Pyrenees to freedom. The best-known figures who
escaped in this dramatic fashion included Andr Breton, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Lion
Feuchtwanger, Konrad Heiden (who had written a critical biography of Hitler), Heinrich Mann,
Alma Mahler-Werfel, Andr Masson, Franz Werfel, and the Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam. In all, Fry
helped around two thousand individuals, ten times the number he had sent out to look for.
() Alvin Johnson, at the New School for Social Research in New York, took ninety scholars
to create a University in Exile, where the faculty included Hannah Arendt, Erich Fromm, Otto
Klemperer, Claude Lvi-Strauss, Erwin Piscator, and Wilhelm Reich. Most of these scholars he
had either met or corresponded with in editing the groundbreaking Encyclopedia of the Social
Science.
()The Artists in Exile exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1942, and other like it
introduced Americans to the work of important European artists. () several painters who showed
at Matisse never felt comfortable in America and returned to Europe as soon as they could; others
adapted and stayed; none could fail to respond to the apocalyptic events they had been through.
One of Hitler`s greatest gifts to the new world was Arnold Schoenberg. Once the Nazis took
power, there was never much doubt that the composer would have to leave. Although he had
converted from Judaism to Christianity early life, that never made any impression with the
authorities, and in 1933 he reverted to being a Jew in the same year he was blacklisted as a
cultural Bolshevik and dismissed rom his Berlin professorship. () Schoenberg accepted
immediately, arriving in America in October.
America, however, was not quite ready for Schoenberg, and he found the early months hard
going. () he never lost his sight of what he was trying to do in music, and he successfully
resisted the blandishments of Hollywood: when MGM inquired if he would like to write for films, he
put them off by quoting so high a price ($50,000) that they melted away as quickly as they
appeared.

The Modern Mind: An intellectual history of the 20
th
century (2010) by Peter Watson. Published by Harper Collins e-Books.
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Document 4:

Crematorium: Think it like we died here in the Concentration Camp of Dachau (August 2011) by Aura Chiriboga.
Document 5:

Never Again in the Concentration Camp of Dachau (August 2011) by Aura Chiriboga.

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The Holocaust had a large influence in society after World War II ended in 1945.
People that were affected migrated to other places of the world to feel secure. Fear
remained among the survivors no matter where they were, and this fear was passed
to their descendants. Memories of this event had always been part of the world
society from generation to generation.
Immigration of people during and after the Holocaust was important to society
because of the spread and development of new ideas. Intellectuals trying to escape
from Holocaust and death travelled to countries were they could be safe. In
document 3, the author is analyzing how the immigration of people to the United
States affected the intellectual developments of America in relation to Europe. The
authors point of view is that thanks to the Holocaust, immigration occurred which
lead to the development of intellectuals within the United States. The immigration of
great minds from all types of intellectual areas helped countries in the Americas,
such as the United States, to develop in technology, art, science, literature, and
many other aspects. These developments helped improve, spread, and relate the
ideas from the European continent to the rest of the world. As analyzed in document
2, people that arrived from Europe to the Americas during and after World War II
were received to other countries with acceptance and compassion. Survivors of the
Holocaust felt relief when they were free, and finally when the found a new place to
live safely. Their final relief was when they realized that they had a new stable home
in which they could live calmly. Through the establishment of survivors and
immigrants in foreign countries, the memories of the Holocaust had been spread in
different parts of the world since.
The vivid memories of the Holocaust are a great part of it remembrance because
the memories of the survivors have been passes from one generation to another in
order to maintain the memory alive. Due to the amount of suffering that existed
during the Holocaust, people decided to keep the memories alive to try to prevent
anything similar to happen, as analyzed from document 4 and document 5.
Document 4 refers to the monument at the entrance of the crematorium of Dachau,
in which thousands of people died. The monument exposes the idea of the
remembrance of the people who died there over the course of the war. Since the end
of the Holocaust there have been many museums that help to teach people about
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the facts and memories of the survivors. In document 2, the idea in which the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum was established could be analyzed. In certain
way, museums had been established to teach the future generations about the
devastating things that occurred during those six years of war. The authors point of
view is that the museum is a way to project the survivors victory against death and
Nazism. In Professor Shewach Weiss book, The Messiah hasn't come, wrote:
"Germany is now making the transition from the Nazi generation to that raised or
born after World War II. During this 'seam' period, between the end of the era of
collective indictment and the onset of that of collective responsibility, I wished to
learn something, from up close, about the philosophy of life and the soul-searching
among the new Germans." Through this, Professor Shewach Weiss expresses how
Nazism has been changing continually until a point in which it is not a strong
movement. Even though the Nazi lost power over time, it caused fear among the
people.
The element of fear used by the Nazis to maintain control had a huge impact on
survivors of the Holocaust. Fear has remained among people throughout time.
Document 1 mentions the fear and the dangers that existed in the concentration
camps. No one could trust others because they didnt knew it that other would help
them or would betray them. On the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, there is a part in
which he talks about trust as vain: In the beginning there is faith-which is childish;
trust-which was vain; and illusion-which is dangerous. This quote analyzes how the
thoughts changed due to the fear of death. In Elie Wiesels book of his experience in
a concentration camp, he starts by being a faithful kid but ends changing his mind
because of the horrifying things he sees. There is not only the fear towards the
Nazis, when the war ended the fear became towards another event similar to the
Holocaust, such as document 5 demonstrates. Never again is a saying that was
imposed so that the fear of it to happen again would remain among people.
Society had a drastic change during and after World War II ended. The feelings
that were created during the Holocaust still remain in the Post-Holocaust society with
the same essence, but imposed in different ways. Those feelings lead to the
immigration of Europeans to safer countries in which they could have calm and
receiving places that they could later call them home. Museums, statues, and other
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memorials had been created to maintain the idea of the Holocaust alive so that it
wont happen again anytime soon. The society during and after World War II was
completely influenced by the ideas imposed by the Nazis that produced the
Holocaust.







Works Cited
Goodreads Inc. (n.d.). Night Quotes by Elie Wiesel. Retrieved December 19, 2012, from Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/265616-la-nuit
NatureQuest Publications, Inc. (n.d.). Holocaust Survivors and Rememberance Project Part III.
Retrieved December 12, 2012, from I Survived the 20th Century Holocaust:
http://isurvived.org/TOC-III.html
Watson, P. (2012). The Modern Mind: An intellectual history of the 20th century. Harper Collins e-
Books.
Weiss, S. (2001, February 1). Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved December 12, 2012, from
The Impact of the Holocaust on Politics:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2001/2/The%20Impact%20of%20the
%20Holocaust%20on%20Politics-%20by%20Profes
Wiesel, E. (2003, November 2). Sharing the Memories. Retrieved December 13, 2012, from United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
http://www.ushmm.org/tribute/followup/remarks.php?content=November2/04-wiesel