Citizens of the World Research topic

View some video testimony of Holocaust survivors. What does this kind of historical documentation provide that other kinds do not?

                 The Holocaust is a very sorrowful period of this world's history. No matter what type of documentation it is, strong heart felt emotions will always be transmitted through the documentation. It can be a book, or a picture, or maybe even a video of someone talking about what they went through during the war and how they survived it. However, there is a very noticeable difference between reading a book that speaks about the Holocaust and what sort of things happened, and reading a book about someone that went through the Holocaust. The reader will sympathize with the writer more if he or she was the one that went through the Holocaust, because a person that did not go through it can not recreate the desperation and the need to survive that all the people that had to live it did.

                   A picture I believe is one of the documentations that affect us the most. Yes we get sad when we read about the Holocaust, but to see the things that men and women had to go through is a whole new story. Pictures capture show things that really happened and we don't have to analyse them to know what is happening. I still can not get out of my head the faces of all those emaciated children and men and women. I think that a picture stays with a person longer than words do. I think that if the German people would have seen all the things that are shown today the Holocaust wouldn't have happened. I just can't believe that a group of people could be so heartless as to follow Hitler being aware of what really was happening.  

                When I saw the video of Elie Wiesel going through Auschwitz years after the Holocaust I felt sadder than when I read his book Night. I think that it's because I was seeing a real person speak about his life in the concentration camp. I knew that he was a real person when I read the book, but it is different when you actually see a person. Throughout the whole video I was like, "this person really went through all of that." They were very strong because I don't think that I would have had the strength to do what they did. Different types of documentations provide different amounts of emotion, and different levels of reality.