The Complexity of Genocide

This image from the Holocaust is a truly haunting artifact that tells a story of death and immorality without using any words.  This picture only shows a portion of the thousands of wedding rings that were taken from the Jewish prisoners that were forced into concentration camps.  There are so many aspects of this image and what its contents entail that are terrible and almost unimaginable.  The rings themselves are symbolic, these are not just rings, these are wedding rings.  Symbols of love, loyalty, and life.  The SS taking these rings away from the Jewish prisoners is a metaphorical connection to the SS taking the lives of the Jewish.  The concentration camps were not filled with love and life, but rather the opposite.

“‘You are in a concentration camp.  In Auschwitz...’  A pause.  He was observing the effect his words had produced.  His face remains in my memory to this day.  A tall man, in his thirties, crime written all over his forehead and his gaze.  He looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life. (Wiesel 38)”

In this section of a passage from Night, Wiesel is describing an SS officer.  The word choice that Elie uses paints such a clear image in only a few sentences.  The image of a facial expression so cruel that it is associated with crime is extremely descriptive.  A person so evil that their physical appearance itself feels like a violation would scare anyone.  The people Elie talks about are the same people who greedily take away irreplaceable belongings to melt for gold.  Separating the Jewish from their families and loved ones wasn’t enough; the Nazis had to take away the only things that were left to show that they even had families in the first place.

Comparing the Jewish prisoners to dogs is further evidence that the Nazis didn’t even see the Jewish as human beings.  The loss 0f personal belongings and erasure of identity is not the way humans are treated, it is the way animals and puppets are treated.

“‘Remember it always, let it be graven in your memories.  You are in Auschwitz.  And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home.  It is a concentration camp.  Here, you must work.  If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney.  To the crematorium.  Work or crematorium - the choice is yours.’ (Wiesel 39)”

This section of the passage is more directly connected to the wedding rings themselves.  The connotation of marriage is a home, a family, and happiness.  It is directly stated in the passage that Auschwitz is none of these things.  Each wedding ring has its own story.  Each ring has a proposal story, a meeting story, a wedding story.  Thousands of happy memories being burned along with the people who wore them.

• Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Les editions de Minuit. 1986. Print.
• "Remembering the Holocaust Photo Gallery." history.com. 2014. Web. <http://www.history.com/photos/remembering-the-holocaust#>