The Oppressed: Bio

The article “Can You Learn Anything From a Void,” (http://www.tnr.com/book/review/druggist-auschwitz-reluctant-accomplice?page=0,0)  is written by Adam Kirsch, and it is written to present the problems of the Nazi oppressive regime coming to power and later on the Holocaust. The story of Victor Capesius shows the fact that ordinary people were forced to sentence others to death or even kill the prisoners themselves. In situation is also discussed in the film “180” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y2KsU_dhwI. In the film the speaker is asking what people would do in the situation of being ordered to kill a person by the “humanly” way with a gun or by burying them alive with a bulldozer. If the person doesn’t kill them then they will be killed. Most would say they would kill the people with the bulldozer because it is the easiest way and they won’t give up their own life if someone else will just take their place. One women says that she would kill the people and expect some one else to stand against the killing of the millions of people. That same woman goes on to ask, “Where were the German people during the Holocaust?” The response was maybe they were all people that thought that someone else was going to stop the horrible cleansing of the Jews people. It would be suicide to go up against the Nazi regime and so people were afraid to stand against the oppressive government, but oppressive governments have been a part of human history since the first man left the tree of the African jungle behind. In the setting of Macbeth, the middle ages, most countries were ruled by a monarchy and they used feudalism to rule their subjects. The largest class of people was the peasants, and they were like slaves to their superiors and had little say in what happened in their own lives. They were oppressed and taught to only follow commands so in the play Macbeth, Macbeth becomes crazy over chances that other man will have a better claim to the Crown. He begins killing innocent men to keep his crown. The men doing Macbeths biding knew nothing more than to follow their master and do what he commands. They would have even less chance of surviving going up against their king than going against the Nazi Regime in the middle of the 1900s.

            Leaping forward in time to the year 2012, “the year the world is to end,” countries that have been under oppressive governments have began to rise against their governments as one, rebel against it and go to war against it. The people of Egypt over threw their dictator and are trying to set up a fair government. The people of Libya have defeated their Dictator in a civil war and have killed him, with the support of NATO and the United Nations. It was a bloody and gruesome war with trained soldiers against everyday citizen with guns. And for eleven months now the citizens of Syria have been protesting their government and have been getting shot, bombed, and beaten for it. Why all of a sudden are the dictators collapsing from the pressure of their people? The answer is knowledge. In the days of King Macbeth and the Holocaust the people didn’t really know what was going on except what their governments told them. They had no idea if other people were rebelling and were oppressing to think that what they were doing was right and fine. In the middle ages they had no idea that they could rebel against their master and even in the mid 1900s they didn’t know they had many choices. The people in Germany were brainwashed to think that their race was the only one made by God and that the others had no right to life. The few people that tried to explain to the people that the government was killing innocent people were quickly throne into the gas chambers.  

]           When people are forced to kill innocent people and are brainwashed no even think of other options how are they too realize the magnitude of their actions? They couldn’t unless they knew their options. If the Germans weren’t oppressed to think that the killing was the Word of God and that the government needs the people to be a government. They would have taken a second look at what they were doing, and realized that what they were doing was wrong and rebelled against the Nazi Regime. To be guilty of the murdering, they must be aware of it. Yes, many might have been aware they were murdering people so they would be guilty. It takes a lot of courage to go against authority and to do what is right.