Psychological Techniques: Effective or Ineffective? Throughout the course of the Holocaust, which lasted from 1933-1945, Nazis used a variety of different psychological techniques to lure, and ultimately exterminate about six million Jewish people. Some of these techniques include the foot-in-the-door technique, public executions, living conditions, emotional fear, among other techniques such as seemingly harmless activities like dancing with joyful music, false hope, and the separation of families. In addition to these psychological effects used on the actual prisoners, Nazis also used propaganda to further instil the anti-semitic ideology into the German citizens; this also led to the Holocaust. Clearly the Nazi propaganda and psychological …show more content…
Often times, the goal of the public exterminations was to make people fear them, and fear the idea of disobeying the SS officers. In the movie Escape From Sobibor, we see how the people who were caught trying to escape the camp, were executed. In addition, the prisoners were forced to view their killing. If the prisoners looked away, they too would have been executed. Elie gives his account of watching the victims of public extermination: “He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God's sake, where is God?’” People also lost faith due to the dreadful scenes they had to witness. Those who had once been religious believed their supreme being had turned their backs to them. This made them more emotionally scared since the one thing they relied on, had betrayed them, and so it seemed as there was truly no hope at all for them. Many times, their relatives of loved ones were the ones being executed, creating emotional trauma. Elie Wiesel writes, “Smack in the middle of the road, two cauldrons of soup with no one to guard them….free for the taking. But who would dare? Fear was greater than hunger.” Starvation was another method used by the Nazis, only fear outranked being hungry. Fear was in their bones, traumatizing them, and public executions only made them become even more afraid of them being executed sooner or
The Nazi’s were horrible and did many things to people who are unimaginable. According to Elie Wiesel in the memoir night, published in 2006, and by Oprah’s interview with Eliezer Wiesel at Auschwitz one technique the Nazi’s used to get what they wanted from the prisoners was mind games to trick them into doing things. To begin, the holocaust was a horrible time in history and millions of people died from the Nazi’s. The Nazi’s used mind games to get the prisoners to go into the “shower” which, according to Oprah in her interview with Elie, “when they were inside the door was shut and they were in a gas chamber.”
At the camps the people are forced to work, and are killed for not working, or not being able to work. The people were taken to gas chambers, beat to death, or just left to die. Often after a person died they would burn the body. “ It cannot be true what they whisper here, that people are being burned in there …” (Sender 164), Ruth does not realize that people are really being burned in the chymes, because they don’t tell the “prisoners”.
Medical Experiments during the Holocaust The holocaust, lasting from 1933 to 1945, became known as one of the most disturbing affairs in history. During this time period not only were six million Jew’s murdered, but many people from different minority groups were killed as well. They were brought to German concentration camps, where they were prisoners in very harsh conditions.
Thousands of Jewish prisoners were killed per day in concentration camps. The way the Nazis succeeded in killing this much Jews was by creating gas chambers and crematoriums. First, in the novel night, Elie Wiesel described how he witnessed dozens of “children being thrown into the flames.” Wiesel was told when he arrived to Auschwitz that “Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney.
In many ways, Nazis had physically, mentally, and emotionally dehumanized their victims. The Jews were treated so badly by the Nazis that they felt as if they weren’t even humans; they felt like animals. For example, the Jewish prisoners were always being yelled at with harsh tones. Eliezer only remembers one time when a Polish
But the other threw himself on him. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died” ( Wiesel 101). While the Jews were being transferred to a new camp, an older man had bread, and when he tried to eat it he was attacked and killed by other starving Jews. This quote really shows how desensitized some people were to death because of the horrible conditions they were put through. A strong quote is “The train stopped in an empty field.
The people had already put aside their emotions for others, and began to give up all hope for a better life, and then the public executions made many give up their religious beliefs and hope for a nice afterlife. Whenever the gallows first showed up, and the first hanging of a boy took place, Elie thought, “this boy, leaning up against the gallows, deeply upset me”(Wiesel, 62). The sense of justice and that the good were rewarded and the bad were punished began to fade. The Jews can see that the judges in the camps can do as they please and choose who lives and dies, and that the sentences are not always fair. The crematorium did not involve them looking death in the face, but with the gallows they were dehumanized because they could not look away from the facts that life is not fair and just, and that their beliefs should be doubted.
Nazi propaganda was meant to promote anti-Semitism, hatred, and fear. The Jew was reduced to a vermin or pest that needed to be exterminated. Not only did the Nazis achieve this dehumanization goal on posters, they achieved their dehumanization of the Jews within the walls of the ghettoes, the concentration camp’s electric fence, and the humane soul of the people. From the starvation in the ghettos, people had already started falling victim to savagery as they were being transported in the rail cars. After a lady had continually screamed about an imaginary fire, “She received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal” as the crowd shouted their approval (Wiesel 26).
Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of the pleasure. If one of us stopped for a second, a quick shot eliminated the filthy dog.” (Wiesel 85). This quote justifies the heartless actions of the SS men. While testing the emaciated prisoner’s endurance, without hesitation, the SS men proceeded to executing any Jewish hostage who dares to refuse
The fear that Nazis created in the camps silenced the prisoners and made them vulnerable to everything they subjected them to. Since the Nazis were able to silence and destroy the soul of the prisoners they were able to continue to subject the Jews the torture of the Holocaust for such a long time. Elie Wiesel documents how the Nazis were able to create vulnerable prisoners and continue to process for a long time. They took away their voices, the only weapons that the Jews had
and for that Elie Wiesel was whipped 25 times for catching his boss having sex with one of the female prisoners. A prisoner was shot for trying eat some soup on the ground. With that in mind, Hitler used this tactic to pry the self-confidence and emotion out of the prisoners ultimately dehumanizing the Jews. By the first few days in the concentration camp, Elie’s father already had a blank face and showed no emotion towards anything. And obviously you can tell it was
Some of these survivors never believed in their religion after their experiences. However, for others, it took time for them to retrieve the passionate faith that they once had. In the duration of their time spent at the concentration camps, almost all of the victims questioned
With such dreadful conditions, the Jews began initiating resistance and uprisings. Even though the prisoners knew loss was unquestionable, they fought bravely and certain. The Jews wanted the future generation to know that they would never give up without a fight. The Nazi officers kept watch of the prisoners every second; the inhumanity of the guards murdered the spirit of the Jews. Because of the environment of the camps, a countless number of Jews died every day.
Losing faith is like clearing off a foggy windshield. The true pain and suffering of the world are revealed. During the Holocaust, the SS would often force prisoners to witness the deaths of fellow prisoners, to scare them into obeying the SS and to show the prisoners what would happen to them if they did not follow orders. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses symbolism and metaphors to show the theme that suffering will weaken religious faith.
Propaganda, terror and repression played a significant role in the Nazi regime. Hitler used each to supplement and complement each other with the main focus to make Hitler appear a strong, powerful and all-knowing man who was in favour of the Nazi vision of the ‘national community’. This all impacted the German people by preserving support for Nazism and ensuring that the community that didn 't agree with the Nazi regime would not be heard by any