Ghettos, Forced Labor, Concentration camps, the final solution, death and suffering. To view the Holocaust in any respected medium is to look into the darkest hour of our existence as humans . There is no doubt that anyone looking back on the Holocaust will be stricken with grief that such an event could ever take place, but how could we ever relive the pain and suffering which millions endured during this era? There is no possible way we ever could . How then can we best understand the fear and the suffering these people endured? I have taken two different approaches to documenting what went on during these darkest of years and analyzed each. I viewed Spielberg's award winning film "Schindler's List" and read Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt's "Holocaust: a history". While the monograph filled me with many facts on, and a heavy heart for the victims of the Holocaust; Spielberg's film brought before my eyes the horrors endured by the Jew's in a light which I had never before grasped. To truly illustrate the terrors, the pain and the suffering felt by so many, I felt the film was far more successful. To understand (as best we can) what these people lived and died through, the film is the best medium I have ever witnessed. I think that in order to understand that is to truly have etched in your mind, that which should never be forgotten.
Before I am to defend my claim I would like to talk a little about each approach to the subject in more detail. "Holocaust: A History" opened my eyes to many facts about the Holocaust and the events leading up to it. For instance I was surprised to learn that the first population of Jew's to be murdered were those of Romania, and that those who carried out the murders were not even German. The Romanian's first forced their Jewish population into organized death marches. Their unabashed cruelty included the removal of...