Hannah Arendt

For the past few decades, since the end of World War II, people around the world have learned about the devastating Holocaust that took place under Nazi rule in the 1940s. After reading the excerpt from Total Domination by Hannah Arendt, it is clear that no one can truly know what the human beings, imprisoned in concentration camps, experienced. Simply trying to find words to describe the unbelievable cruelty of those concentration camps is beyond difficult, and that is based only on what we have learned from textbooks and teachers. Arendt believed that it may not be possible for even those courageous survivors to describe the sufferings they endured. After reading this passage, I can honestly agree that the burden of even attempting to relive those painful times, is far too great.
Arendt also took an entirely different approach to understanding the lives of the prisoners in the concentration camps than what we have previously learned. She believed that the mental suffering and the isolation took a greater toll on those human beings than anyone could imagine. They were cut off from the rest of the world and were made to believe that they had no personal value, nothing to work toward. She also expressed her belief that even the prisoners could not describe or relive their own pain, because of the obvious trauma. I can understand this in many ways. It is always easier to repress painful memories and to try to work for something better. The human beings in the concentration camps during World War II survived an unimaginable horror. They lived a life far away from civilization and any type of humanity. It is impossible for us to understand their sufferings, but it is also our duty to be certain that such a tragedy should never take place in our world again.