Essay, Research Paper: Holocaust

Holocaust
Essay submitted by Yogi36@mailexcite.com

I've thought, and thought about resistance in the Holocaust and I've come to this
realization: No words or poem or detailed description can describe the level of terror
and oppression that took place. I am simply going to try my best to understand a
fraction of the pain that many people went through, and the lessons we can learn from
what happened.

If the people that died in the Holocaust had one thing to say, I think that they would
say, "Life is a gift, and you're lucky to have it, don't waste it, because before you even
know it, it won't be a free gift anymore." The oppressed Jews went to their physical
and mental limit just to avoid death. Therefore, if we do not live our lives to the most
passionate way we know how, then we are wasting the extremely valuable gift of life. I
don't think it's fair to waste our life, because many people worked a lot harder than us
to have life, while they were not able to have it. So by not living our lives to the fullest
we are cheating them. Our lives are very short, and refusing to live them to the fullest
makes them even shorter. Furthermore, we as a society must do our best, to keep
people from stealing other people's lives. If life is not protected than we are giving in to
death, which is the very thing the Jews fought to avoid. By not taking a stand against
those who cheat others out of their life we are in fact causing death. I don't remember
who said it, but I'll always remember the quote, "Whoever forgets the past, is doomed
to repeat it." If our society does not remember the suffering of the Jews, we could be
sentencing ourselves to the same pain.

Finally, I know that the only way to fully live life is to have life eternally through Jesus
Christ. Holocaust is defined as, "the wholesale destruction and loss of life." Ultimately
we will all face our own holocaust, because I know that I will someday die. Yet just as
Americans came to the rescue of the Jews, Jesus Christ came to rescue me when he
died for me. He lived through his own holocaust so that I won't have to. If we simply
trust that Jesus will save us from death, just as the Jews believed that someone would
rescue them from death, we can have true eternal life with God forever in heaven. This
trust is the ultimate resistance against the loss of life, or the holocaust.

Bibliography
Klein, Gerta Weissmann, One Survivor Remembers. HBO, 1996.
Schindler's List. Dir. Steven Spielberg. With Lia Neeson and Ben Kingsley. Universal
1994.