Film Lesson: Night and Fog

Night and Fog was a chilling documentation of the most dangerous death camp built by the Germans in 1940, Auschwitz. Contrary to Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg, this documentary depicted a more domestic view of the concentration camp, and also provide more facts that cleared the image of the death camp. The movie, directed by Alain Resnais in 1956, was critically acclaimed, received several awards, and nominations.

The documentary held some very graphic and depressing scenes. But unlike Schindler’s List, these were all real footage. Everything we saw in this documentary was the real Auschwitz, the actual place were the mass genocide of the Jews took place. This sole fact made the film even more chilling. What we were looking at was Auschwitz. Now, without having to visualize, I could faintly imagine what life there could’ve been like. Barbed fences, with electricity coursing through it at all times would keep you inside day and night. Each and every day of your life there, you would wake up in cold wooden bunks with others sleeping in the same exact bunks, just to be senselessly killed by the Germans. Though outside, the camp seemed like a small town: it had a hospital, showers, etc. But these weren’t what they seemed. The showers did not disperse water. They dispersed Cyanide. People were led to believe they were showers, being that when they first entered the camp, they actually normal showers! But that was all part of the German’s insanity. When the Jews walked in, they would scramble to achieve the highest ground away from the gas. They would fight so much for high ground that deep nail marks and scratches were drawn across the ceiling. However, none would escape. They would all die, in a single room filled with showerheads. And then came the hospitals. I would rather work in the camps than land myself in the hospital. Despite the assuring look of the facility, it was the home of sickening amputations and experiments on the Jews. Some lost their arms, legs, and fertility, as a result of the crude experiments. Some lost their lives.

The scenes in this documentary were very different from that of Schindler’s List. The Hollywood movie featured more dramatic scenes to convey the terror felt by the Jews when the German’s invaded their homes and sent them to the Ghetto, and then the death camps. It also emphasized the German’s emotionless killing. Especially in the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto scene, there was a handful amount of senseless, and open killing, where the sick, elderly, the children, and those who opposed the Germans were shot down without a care. In Night and Fog, the director used cold hard fact over dramatization of fact to illustrate the extent of the German madness.

While the documentary was powerful, I think that its Hollywood counterpart illustrated the Holocaust best. The documentary only gave its viewers a study of the concentration camps, and avoided going in depth with how the Jews ended up in the camps (which is also a crucial part of the Holocaust). The latter showed the Jews, before, and during their time inside the concentration camps. It showed how these Jews were stripped from their homes and families, right before their eyes. The movie utilized heavy gore and death to express to the viewers that the Germans were not joking. They really wanted the Jews dead. It allows the viewers to sympathize more with the unfortunate Jews, because seeing their lives taken away before their eyes in a gory blood bath is enough for one to really think what made their killers so inhumane to do such a thing.

I can honestly say that I found Night and Fog as powerful as the director most likely intended it to be. What really made this documentary so powerful is that everything was real. It showed the real Auschwitz. It showed footage of the captives in Germany’s most devastating death camp. It had footage of the allies going into the camp and plowing all the bodies in clumps from the field as if it had just snowed. Though it did not cover the entire span of the Holocaust as Schinlder’s List did, it still packed all the emotional influence of the Hollywood movie into a short 30 minutes, and made the absolute best of it. Using fact, it showed what the death camps were truly like. It showed the truth.

Film Lesson: Schindler's List

Schindler’s List, directed by Steven Spielberg in 1993, portrays a harsh, remorseless account of the Holocaust.

The scene that was the most powerful for me was when the Nazis were taking away the children. They did it so simply. They led them out with what seemed to be a children’s nursery rhyme, while they all sang along and marched with the soldiers. While all the adults where elsewhere in the camp, the Nazis then loaded the children into several trucks, and closed the trunk once full. And that was it. There was no killing. No bloodshed, and little hassle in the operation (except for the few who ran away). The Nazis were about to begin to move the trucks, when the adults were moved into the dirt field a couple of meters away from the entrance. And there in front of them, were the children. The kids didn’t seem to have a care; they looked as if nothing was wrong, even though everything was horribly wrong. The trucks roared, and the kids were off, waving goodbye. A riot broke out in the group of adults, and they all went running for their children. But the children didn’t have a clue. They continued to wave goodbye while their parents were running and making a desperate attempt to save them. But all was lost. The trucks had already been driven past the gate. Without a care, the children were lulled into thinking they were ok. Their future was lost to the Nazis. This was a very powerful scene, because it comes to show how cruel the Germans were. They took away all the children like taking candy from a baby. They took away the future of the Jews. And what did the children do? Nothing. They were fooled so precisely, and got them into thinking it were just some normal trip. But only history knows what happened after: they were killed. Led away from their parents, and killed. A plain and lucid plan that resulted in the death of all those children is hard to imagine, and depressing when you realize that it was performed with perfect precision.

Another part of the movie that was very emotional was the scenes with the girl in red. In the midst of the liquidation of the ghetto comes a small blonde girl dressed in red, in contrast to the black and white world that surrounds her. Innocent and naïve, she walked the streets of the ghetto while Germans were gunning the Jews down left and right. In all this turmoil, she walks alone. She comes to an apartment, slips inside, and hides herself under a bed, fearing the ferocious soldiers outside. Time passes, and the scene soon comes to Schindler looking at the Germans cremating all of the bodies of the ghetto, to destroy the evidence that a mass murdering had happened. Nameless bodies are all moved in wheelbarrows to a burning pile of Jews, with black soot covering their ragged bodies. Then another cart comes. In it are nameless corpses, and a little girl with a red dress, dead. Her clothes were dirty, dusted, much like the corpses next to her, and her hair was in a messy clump. Indifferently, she is placed on the ramp to be incinerated. I found this to be the most emotional scene of all because it was like she was a representative of the burden held by all of the Jews. She was a little girl, with aspirations to grow up and become something great, just like everyone else. She was an individual with a family, friends, and a place to call home. She had done nothing wrong, and yet, she and the people she knew were being ruthlessly killed before her eyes. Her life ended abruptly, symbolizing how the Jews had everything taken away from them, when they still had so much more to give.

Some of the images that will always stay with me were the brutal deaths of the Jews. For example, when a Jewish engineer tried to advise the German of an error in the construction of a facility, they shot her down through her head. Her head pummeled to the earth with such a force that she bounced back up and landed on her side. Another killing that was memorable (in a bad way) was when a young man tried to run from the formation of Jews. One German soldier attempted at firing at him, but they all missed. Two other soldiers chased after him, and caught him when he was about twenty-five feet away. They dragged him by the arms back to the line of Jews, and another soldier shot him square in the chest when he was only about fifteen feet away. An odd sort of dust mixed with blood spurted out of him, and he fell limp in the two Germans’ arms.

U.S. Atomic Bombing of Japan in 1945

SIRS Knowledge Source Article

Yes, I agree with the article that says the loosing the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the no. 1 story of this century. Consider where we are in the world today. Because of our creation of the weapon, and making two chilling demonstrations of its power, other nations have taken liberty upon themselves to make it as well, so that they would not become inferior on a global comparison. Only about forty years ago, the tension created by the major imbalance of power due to the atomic bombs almost jumped into another war, except it narrowly avoided. This was the Cold War, a sort of look into what could eventually happen in the future: an all-out nuclear war.
And now, because of us (the U.S) seven other nations now posses nuclear weapons; these nations include Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, and North Korea (who had assembled their bomb just recently). The atomic bombs are still a center of conflict today, because the U.S.'s initial reason for entering Iraq was to disarm all supposed nuclear weapons and their plants. But the fact that a full-scale conflict hasn’t erupted yet since the Cold War is amazing in itself. But peace doesn’t last. I that that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki set in motion something that humankind will have to suffer in too soon a time, let alone the number of people who have already suffered immensely from it. The bombs were truly a first: it wiped out a complete city in a few seconds flat, it introduced to us death by radiation, and most importantly, it introduced chemical warfare (which is becoming more and more common in the arsensal of military weapons today). Honestly, I cannot think of a news story that has such an enormous effect worldwide as this event has.

While the list propagated is mostly accurate, I would like to change a few things around. “The first mass market personal computers” at 31 should be moved to no. 10, because now, computers run in the background of companies and small businesses alike, and also in our daily life. Having a computer that fills an entire room and weighs a ton would not be sufficient at all for everyday use. But, in 1977, the first personal computer made it possible to downsize the originally enormous computer into something anyone can access.

Another list item that should change is “Deadly AIDS disease identified. 1981”, placed at 25. This item should be placed around 15 because it is a deadly disease that since it discovery has been racking the world, especially in the poorer, less fortunate countries. Plus, it is thus far an incurable disease, leaving many infected victims to die a guaranteed death.

Germany at War - WWII

Propaganda - Propaganda is a class of advertising that commonly involves either the degrading or enhancing of the image of the intended target, through fact, opinion, and/or rumor.

The above propaganda, created by the Nazi Political Party in Germany in 1941, was likely created in order to promote their campaign through the Soviet Union. I believe this for several reasons. The most obvious and prominent indication is the strong caricature of Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, and the giant armored fist that has already punched Stalin with an uppercut (so it seems). The fist is a simple symbol representing the German Army, and the fact that it is armored shows its strength and power over the other. The fist’s size also contributes to the overall view of the German Army, since it occupies a considerable portion of Europe (from the picture, it seems to be over Poland, and France). Another reason is the contrast in colors of the nations at war. Most of Europe is depicted in a faint yellow color, representative of Germany. Britain, however, is faded and brown, with an emphasized cross reading “W CHURCHILL”, pointing to the fact that Britain has fallen, or possibly that its death is inevitable. However, there are marks of red on Britain, suggesting that it has taken hits from Germany already. But note how the island to the left of Britain is also yellow, which probably means that Germany did not wish to control Britain, but it did want control over the island next to it. Then comes the Soviet Union, whose nation is represented by the red color signature to the soviets. While the rest of Europe is in yellow, under Germany’s control, the Soviet Union is the only that hasn’t been conquered. The poster justifies all of the imagery mentioned with the three objects within Germany’s territory, behind the fist. These are a baby’s cradle, a factory, and a farmland. The baby’s cradle is symbolic of life in Germany, and the security of its people. The factory’s symbolism is clear: it is the industry of Germany. And the last is the farmland, symbolic of Germany’s general prosperity and land. Because food is often seen as critical aspect for success in any civilization, it capitalized in this poster with the farmland symbolism. The fact that these icons are placed behind the fist might indicate that these are what make the foundation of the purpose of Germany’s Army in invading the Soviet Union.

What wraps up the entire poster into one central theme is the quote at the bottom of the poster, which reads “Europas sieg dein wohlstand”. This translates to “Of Europe’s victory your prosperity”, which basically refers to Germany, since Europe happens to be all under its hold. If Germany were to defeat the Soviet Union, which is the goal of the Germany Army, it would result in greater security, more land, more food, and more industry.