Why the history should not be forgotten Is the memory of the Holocaust Essay

Why the history should not be forgotten Is the memory of the Holocaust used to foster divides in Europe How - Essay Example of global focus during this annual event and it uses the opportunity to assert its existence and the need to protect the nation from external aggression, mainly from the neighboring Arab communities. There are many arguments for and against commemoration of the Holocaust. Some people feel that the history should not be forgotten. Others argue that the memory of the Holocaust is used to foster divides in Europe and should be forgotten. Jews commemorate the Holocaust as part of their history reflecting the suffering they endured in Europe under the Nazi Germany. The global event is seen as a remembrance that not only acts as a lesson and a caution against human rights violation but also as a direction towards the right course for humanity as a whole. By virtue of it being an important lesson for humanity, it should not be forgotten. Generations will come and learn through the mistakes that the world made in the past and ensure that they do not reoccur. The Holocaust formed the foundation of the United Nations, which was an international organization viewed by all nations globally as the centre of hope for humanity and the future. Remembering the Holocaust promotes a shared resolve among nations to prevent such terror from ever happening anywhere else in the world. The commemoration represents an unmistakable resolution of nations, focused at appreciating that if nations identify with the ideals they protect, they c an be preserved (Lecomte, 2006). A national day of the liberation of Auschwitz is observed in Germany when the victims of state socialism are also remembered. For the survivors, the events of Auschwitz still linger in their minds. Those whose loved ones were killed in the concentration camps still visit the sites where these camps were located in Poland and they have a right to remember, reflect and narrate the occurrences over and over again to younger people who need to understand the past events that shaped the global relations that exist today. A

Compare and Contrast Country Lovers and The Welcome Essay

Compare and Contrast Country Lovers and The Welcome - Essay Example However, other issues that are related to the study of literary works such as style are usually the same. The thematic concerns that are centered in literary works are also mostly the same. These are the various factors that are discussed when looking at literary works. This paper will be a discussion of two literary works Country Lovers by Nadine Gordimer and The Welcome Table by Alice Walker. Focus will be on content, form, style and setting of the two literary works. These features will be analyzed so as to ascertain the rationalization that they have towards developing the themes of race and ethnicity that are common in both works. All these aspects as pertains to the two stories will be compared and contrasted. Both literary works, Country Lovers and The Welcome Table are short stories. They can be found in a number of collected anthologies. However, despite the fact that they are both story stories, they are quite different. While Gordimer’s story is long and quite detai led, this is not the case in The Welcome Table. This story is quite brief but still manages to pass the message that it was intended to. Through descriptive words, the author has still managed to come up with a plot that is interesting to follow. Therefore, while both literary works are short stories, one is long and much more detailed than the other. This is what contrasts the two literary works of art in terms of form. It also makes them quite interesting to study. ? ­ One aspect that is similar in both Country Lovers and The Welcome Table is the protest about racism; this is followed by the tragic human consequences that this practice comes with. Despite the fact that the stories are written based on the same thematic concerns, the context in which they are written is very different. Moreover, the way in which they are written and the emotional impact that they have on the readers are not the same. For example, whilst Gordimer’s story is written in South Africa when the apartheid regime was rampant, Walker’s story is set in the United States during the post civil war period. These were different historical times that occurred in places that are far apart and the experiences that the characters in this stories had may not have been the same. During the Apartheid system, the law, under the operation of the state was used to impose difficult living conditions on the non-whites in South Africa (Union of South Africa, 2012). This situation can be seen from the text, while Paulus went to school and lived in full comfort and sometimes even enjoying some luxuries, like movies, this was not the same case with Thebedi, she was supposed to do manual labor on the white man’s house with education being a secondary objective to her and the other black children (Gordimer, 1975). This was as per the law that ensured that there was a great disparity between the lives of the blacks and the whites. While this was the situation for the blacks, all wealth , economic and educational opportunities were privileges that were exclusively reserved for the whites in South Africa. On the other hand Walker focuses on the plight that the older rural based African Americans go through. This is through the life of complete slavery that they have been subjected to and they are still subjected to. Even though some reforms were made during the Civil Rights era, there is a lot of subjugation that the blacks