Group Conformity In The Holocaust

Conflict is caused by many things, and conflict affected many lives. There are many ways to deal with such conflict, one of them being conformity. Conformity is convenient and effective tool that is used in a time of conflict. Susan Bartoletti, the author of Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, told the story of Sophie Scholl’s conformity and Joanne Oppenheim, the author of Dear Miss Breed, shared the experiences of young Japanese Americans in internment. Both these authors, along with a few other authors, showed how conformity can help in a time of conflict, reasons not to resist the ways of the other party, and how one can comply while resisting the ideas of the other party.

Racial discrimination has always caused problems in history. The Jewish Holocaust was one such example. The Jewish Holocaust, lasting from 1933 to 1945, was one of the most horrific events in history.

During the Holocaust, many people suffered from the despicable actions of others. These actions were influenced by hatred, intolerance, and anti-semitic views of people. The result of such actions were the deaths of millions during the Holocaust, a devastating genocide aimed to eliminate Jews. In this tragic event, people, both initiators and bystanders, played major roles that allowed the Holocaust to continue. Bystanders during this dreadful disaster did not stand up against the Nazis and their collaborators. This action of silence encouraged more people to follow, which lead to Hitler and the Nazi Party’s rise to power without having to face formidable opposition. Following the Nazi Party’s rise to power, the Holocaust began to take form. Fueled by hatred, intolerance, and anti-semitic beliefs under Adolf Hitler’s rule,

Individuals make choices every day that affect history. During the Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews during Hitler’s reign, ordinary European citizens shaped history by allowing Jews to die. Their decisions were greatly influenced by their understanding of the universe of obligation, which sociologist Helen Fein defines as “The circle of individuals and groups ‘toward whom obligations are owed, to whom rules apply, and whose injuries call for [amends]’ (“We and They” 56). The majority of ordinary citizens chose to neglect Jews in order to protect themselves or their families. However, some brave individuals called upstanders chose to stand up to the Nazi regime by rescuing Jews and other victims of persecution. Numerous bystanders claimed to have no other options when faced with a moral dilemma, and in doing so, they gave the perpetrators permission to hurt others. Bystanders enable perpetrators to commit atrocities; therefore, they are just as guilty of the crimes that the Nazis committed during the Holocaust.

Similarities between the Stanley Milgram, and Stanford prison experiment extend beyond the conventional commonalities of psychological experiments. The approach of setup were at extremes with one having a student teacher relationship, compared to that of a prisoner and a guard, but the results of human responses were unnervingly relatable with both teacher and guard, being in the superior position and allowing themselves to degrade the inferior to extremes of death.

Self-preservation is defined as the protection of oneself from harm or death, especially regarded as a base instinct in human beings and animals. It drives us to do things we otherwise would not do, to accomplish things we didn’t know were possible. Self-preservation can often be found throughout history and literature, always in the most desperate of times. Nowhere is it more prominent than in the history and literature surrounding the Holocaust, during which over six million Jews, including 1.5 million children, were brutally murdered in what has become known as one of history’s most deadly and widely publicized genocides. For almost 80 years, historians and Jewish survivors have authored and published their firsthand accounts of the pain they were forced to endure. One such piece of literature is Elie Wiesel’s Night, a memoir illustrating his own experiences in German concentration camps, where every day was dominated by the impulse to stay alive. As Wiesel demonstrated repeatedly in his novel, during the Holocaust, self-preservation forced millions of victims to abandon family members and friends; commit desperate, sometimes suicidal, acts; and blinded many victims to the reality of their situations throughout the genocide.

“We are in the presence of a crime without a name,” said British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The Nazis were always remembered for the killing of over six million European Jews, but at the time, there was no name for this wicked act. After the war, many of these Nazi war criminals were convicted of an act called genocide, a word that did not exist before 1944. Genocide is the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. Genocide occurs because of many factors that trigger this cruelty. Although there are many reasons that can be considered to result in genocide, the three main reasons that result to this mass slaughter, are caused by: the authority that leads them, the ethnic tension between

The way of man is to err. This truth cannot be denied, even with the most innate valor of individuality. George Orwell’s 1984 and Solomon Asch’s 1955 line conformity experiment illustrate the fallibility of human individuality.

As many people have learned about in school, the Holocaust was a genocide of six million Jews and other members of groups seen as “racially inferior” or abnormal to the Nazi German authorities. These people were forced into concentration camps across Nazi-occupied Europe and forced

Jews that lived during the Holocaust were robbed and deprived of their God given rights and humanity.. They slowly lost hope, faith, family, and the reason you keep living. Elie Wiesel realizes he has to let go of his family to survive when the doctor says, “In this place there is no such thing as father, brother, friend”(110). This is dehumanizing because people are born needing a family to depend on and once they lose something as simple as that, they fall into a pit of negative emotions. Thousands of people lost their family members during the holocaust and the Germans had absolutely so sympathy towards them. The Nazis continued their torment by killing large groups of people in small, confined areas. This is supported by a Jew among Wiesel when he said, “we can’t let them kill us like that, like cattle in the slaughterhouse”(31).

“The reaction pattern of the Jews is characterized by almost complete lack of resistance.” Discuss with reference to the Jewish response to the Holocaust.

How does an ordinary group of people turn into bloodless killers? The author of Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning offers the most captivating argument towards how it is possible for ordinary men to commit extraordinary atrocities. This paper will analyze the different viewpoints of what caused ordinary men to commit murder.

Each day, people make decisions that are influenced by what is considered normal in society. Whether it’s the clothes they wear, the activities do, the things they say, or the way they act, everybody participates in conformity on some level. The archetype of conformity is represented all throughout the short film, Destino, and the Broadway play, Sunday in the Park with George, by showing how one can stay true to themselves despite social norms, how one is forced to conform to social norms within society, and the struggle of attempting to remain true to oneself despite conformity around them. Is it always in one’s best interest to conform to these social norms?

The Holocaust was the methodical deportation, dehumanization, and extermination of eleven million people during World WarⅡ (MacKay 6). As a result, two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe was extinguished (MacKay 7). With them, the rich culture and immense potential they held was lost to a senseless mass murder (MacKay 4). The unimaginable brutality of the Holocaust will never be forgotten, and neither will the millions of people who left their friends, family, and neighbors, never to be seen again (Antisemitism). The Holocaust is a time in history when millions of people were persecuted in Europe by being sent to live in ghettos and eventually being deported to concentration camps where they were systematically annihilated until the Allied forces liberated the remaining survivors.

has lead to negative outcomes. This idea is explored through “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut and “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden. In these two texts conformity eliminates individuality and causes the society to be weakened.