Home Page

Tú decides

Encontrar un camino en la vida es TAN difícil. En estos días hay tantos caminos que se nos ofrecen que ni si quiera podemos pensar cuál, solo lo tomamos. Tal vez no nos damos cuenta pero todos los días decidimos si seguimos en ese camino o cambiamos. Hay caminos perversos como caminos a lo eterno. Mientras vayas en el camino perverso, sentirás felicidad. Felicidad a corto plazo. Esta felicidad termina por acabarse tan pronto que sales corriendo en búsqueda por otra poca porción de felicidad. Oh, pero cuando tu elección es el camino a lo eterno, no hay felicidad. Lo que hay en el camino a lo eterno es plenitud. Si sabes lo que es la plenitud, sabes que la felicidad se queda corta. Si tienes plenitud, lo tienes todo. ¿Cuál camino elegirás hoy?

Que Este Viaje Sea Eterno

Había una vez, una niña muy alegre que siempre sonreía, ella tenía el gran deseo de conocer el mar; la llaman Ana, pero en los viajes le decían cotorrita. Ana era pequeña pero lista, juguetona, pero sin hacer travesuras, delgada pero no tanto; con un larguísimo cabello y un copete al frente que la distinguía. Ana también era muy tímida cuando con extraños compartía. Ana había escuchado del mar y las playas, pero no sabía exactamente que eran. ¡Es muy bonito! Sus amigos quemaditos decían, quiero volver y hacer castillos gritaban mientras Ana se preguntaba de que hablaban. La playa... quiero ir a la playa, Ana pensaba; hasta que un día escucho decir a su padre de un viaje importante. Su padre siempre con voz imponente habló con los cinco de la familia. El viaje era importante para su padre así que todos atentos y emocionados comenzaron a alistarse. Ana emocionada casi gritaba, pero pensó en mejor correr a abrazar a su padre. Mil años pasaron y por fin el día del viaje había llegado. Todos contentos con sus chivas en el carro y con risas su emoción sale. Un viaje como jardín de flores, armonía como los colores de todas las flores y risas como muchos cohetes explotando en el cielo. El sol se fue y las estrellas llegaron que este viaje sea eterno la mentecita de Ana deseaba. Todos duermen y su padre como búho no duerme con el volante de frente y la música fuerte. Qué raro tan pronto el sol otra vez sale, pero Ana con ganas de ya llegar pregunta a su padre miles de veces la hora en que llegasen. Su padre como sus maestros pacientemente le contesta todas las veces. Ana abre los ojos ya llegamos su madre le dice, como conejo sale del carro y su sonrisa se hace presente. Ana, Ana ayuda con las cosas mientras que ella solo pensaba en el añorado mar. Hoy no iremos al mar las horribles palabras de su padre fueron. Chispas y más chispas dentro de Ana. Pero a la piscina iremos termino de decir su padre. La piscina es como la mejor golosina que disfrutar para Ana así que las chispas desaparecieron. Por unas horas se divirtió cuando su madre dijo que ya era suficiente. Deliciosa comida y divertidas películas hasta la mañana siguiente. Demasiado temprano para recordarlo y su madre grito: ¡alístense todos! Saltó tan alto que salió de la cama, así como un lince Ana se alistó, conoceré el mar solo pensaba Ana. ¿¡Porque nadie se apura!? Las chispas querían aparecer dentro de Ana, pero en menos de lo que pensó ya estaban de camino a lo que ella deseaba. Desde el cristal se miraba larguísimo y muy azul. Es más bonito que como me lo dijeron y todos en el carro rieron. Ana con miles de pensamientos a la vez quería salir corriendo, pero su madre no paraba de darle instrucciones. Entre tantos pensamientos, se repetía aún más en su mente lo que aquella arena tan bella y suave causaba. Parece como si algo malo dentro de las personas se fuera al sentir esta arena Ana asombrada meditaba. El mar estaba fuera de algo que Ana pudiera explicar y solo se quedó mirando. En compañía de sus guardianes fue y sintió el agua en sus pies. Una tarde más bella que cualquier otra hasta que Ana le dolían los cachetes. Su madre de pronto se le miraba cara de limón, quería que del mar la familia saliera pues el miedo la inundaba. Después de horas y castillos fueron a descansar. Al día siguiente más y más diversión hasta que su padre dijo las peores palabras en su corta vida: el viaje terminó nos vamos a casa. Como cuando te estas ahogando Ana se sintió deseando aún más que el viaje fuera eterno. Después de recoger todo, las maletas en el carro acomodabas estaban y una cara de apachurrada a Ana se le miraba. Desde ese viaje Ana le encanta viajar, pero aún más el mar. Hoy en día Ana cree que la vida no se disfruta solo en viajes sino todos los días.

Sí, También Escribo en Español

¡Amo mi lenguaje nativo !
Amo que en Español puedes expresarte aún más que en Inglés.
Me han dicho que Español es aún más difícil que el Inglés porque una sola palabra puede tener más de tres significados. Esta es una de las razones por las que amo este idioma.
Espero que alguien más por ahí en
mundo comparta la misma idea.

Y no olvides lo que eres...
Una perfecta creación de Dios.
And don't forget what you are...
A God perfect creation.

My Film Research Essay

Imperial Valley College

The Holocaust: Its Roots and the Jews Hero

An unbelievable genocide

Ana Raygoza

English 201

Professor Leweinstein

July 25, 2018

Abstract

This paper describes one of the worst genocides recorded in the history of the world, the Holocaust. It also displays the story of a man, who saves more than a thousand innocent people from being slaughtered. This man, known as Oskar Schindler, not only saved all these lives but also did not humiliate or mistreat any person like all his Nazi colleagues. Oskar became a hero to every Jewish person, saving lives with everything that he had. The Holocaust is not something that started with the idea of just one man, but it came from a long standing Anti-Semitic ideology. This idea began in the 15th century wit discriminative thoughts. Anti-Semitism in the 15^th century, discriminated and led to the death of several Jews, but it did not become as horrific until the Holocaust. People tried to erase the idea of Anti-Semitism but Germany resisted. The whole world should recognize the words that were told to Oskar and make them their own to prevent something like the Holocaust from happening again. They are: “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.’’ Nobody should allow a life to be humiliated, mistreated, or much less killed just because they are a different race.

Ana Raygoza

English 201

Professor Leweinstein

24 July 2018

The Holocaust: Its Roots and the Jews Hero

The movie The Schindler’s List, is a remembrance of what Oskar Schindler did for more than a 1000 Jews during the Holocaust. The Holocaust took place during Germany in 1933. The Nazi Party controlled the nation. Jews began to be discriminated against and segregated. Later, they were arrested and sent to concentration camps. They were removed from society and forced to perform hard labor. Some time later, they began to be mistreated, tortured, then killed. There was one scene in the movie that really stood out to me. There was a girl with a red sack, who walks among the dead after the Germans looted, raped and killed the people in her neighborhood. From a distance, Schindler looks at this scene and is perplexed by the atrocity that the Nazi soldiers had committed. This touched Schindler’s heart greatly. This is when he decided he wanted to save these innocent people. This movie is not like as other Holocaust movies because it reflects on what truly happened to the Jews during the Holocaust and how a compassionate man saved some of them. After seeing the Germans take innocent lives, Oskar begins to negotiate with a commander of a concentration camp and convinces them to let him put a price on each Jewish worker. Although the Nazi party killed more than 6 million Jews, Oskar Schindler, with clear reasoning about life, was able to save some of them.

Just hours after saving more than a 1000 Jews, Oskar Schindler announces they'd be freed. Shortly following, Oskar Schindler and his wife put their stuff inside the car and fled from being caught for being members of the Nazi party. The freed captives gave him a ring in gratitude for what he did. Engraved on the ring were the words, ‘’Whoever saves one life saves the world entirely.” According to the My Jewish Learning page, this phrase comes from a book highly studied by the Jews. This book is known as the Talmud. The article "What Is the Talmud?" makes it very clear that this book is not only read by the Jews but that it is deeply studied by all. When studied, it is learned by heart, which is why it is something that you carry out in your daily life. This book is in Hebrew and is taught to children at a young age. The Talmud is something very important for Jews that is not only read. Oskar Schindler is deeply touched by receiving such a gift, however, wished he could have saved more.

 In order to completely understand The Schindler’s List movie, the viewer must know that this all started with Anti-Semitism.  This racist outlook is what led to the Holocaust. The Holocaust is one of the largest known genocides in the history of the world.  The innocent victims were Jews and those who tried to help them. The Holocaust was created by the Nazi party and supported by the nation. According to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum article, it ended the lives of 6 million people and a number of 17 million victims. There is a scene in the film which shows the Nazi party trying to get rid of the evidence of the Holocaust.  It looked like snow falling from the sky, but in reality, it was ashes that concentration camps produced by burning all of the evidence.  The prisoners of these concentration camps were hurriedly working. Some of them were burying bodies while others were burning them. The German soldiers that were standing around watching had to cover their mouths and noses because of the strong smell from the burning of dead bodies. Oskar Schindler arrived to this horrific scene and talked with the commander in charge.  Schindler was told that they needed to clean up the camp because the war was going to end. While they were talking, Schindler saw the same girl with the red sack he had seen before. Unfortunately, the little girl was on top of a pile of dead people, on her way to be disposed of.  Oskar was shocked and speechless. Looking at the tired Jews working hard and carrying their dead, was heartbreaking.

                Schindler was able to save many lives from dying in the Holocaust. During this time period, the deaths were brutal, people were humiliated, discriminated against, and mistreated. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism existed long before.  “Semitism’’ was created from the word ‘’Semites’’. The word ‘‘Semitism’’ was created by people who hated Jews. The Hebrew language belongs to the Semitic family like other languages, but it was also known for groups of people. This is an example of how people who hated this race tried to justify themselves. As I mentioned earlier, this is not something new, anti-Semitism comes from many years ago.  Anti-Semitism was created through religious discrimination led by Christians. Most Christians had the idea that the Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus and for that they deserved a great punishment, such as death. Also, Christianity in those times had the ideology that through being guilty, they had failed to be the chosen ones of God and that was another reason why they deserved to be punished. During the 15^th century, Jewish people were being burned as punishment for their “bad” actions.  Jewish people were being stereotyped as being lazy, diabolical, unapproachable, avaricious people (Spector, Rozett 112). 

In the nineteenth century, the Enlightenment period began, removing traditional ideas that discriminate and brought humanitarian and social ideas; however, Anti-Semitism did not vanish. Later, Anti-Semitism became even stronger by joining racial anti-Semitism with politics. With Darwin's theories, they tried to justify this kind of new ideology, that the Jews were to blame for the problems of the world. In the political arena, Germany founded the movement known as Voelkish, in which the representatives of Germany were opposed to the modernization of the country. With this political movement, Jews remained as outsiders of society in Germany. At the end of this century, many Anti-Semitic political parties came forward with many discriminatory views towards the Jews. (Spector, Rozett 112-113)

            Anti-Semitism was strongly reborn in Germany with the arrival of Hitler and the Nazi party. The Nazi party came to national power in Germany during 1933 and was the first political party that enforced movements that based their ideology on racist antisemitism. Nazi Party laws were totally discriminatory against the Jewish people and segregated them as we can see in Figure 1.  The Jews were considered as the inferior race.  In countries where there weren’t Nazi and Hitler parties, there was still anti-Semitism, but not as brutal as in Germany. These other countries did not do what they should have in order to save the Jews from the Nazi movement. Fortunately, after discovering what had happened in Germany, others recognized what anti-Semitism could cause. Many Christian churches accepted the fact that it was wrong to cultivate the idea of anti-Semitism to its members. The government even banned anti-Semitism (Spector, Rozett 113). Many people died in the 15^th century because of anti-Semitic ideas and also in its rebirth with the Nazi and Hitler party. During the anti-Semitic era of Hitler more than 6 million Jews had no escape but thanks to Schindler, more than a 1,000 Jews were saved from the horrific Holocaust.

Fig. 1. A woman sits on a park bench marked “Only for Jews.” Austria, ca. March 1938. US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Web. 3 June 2018.

In The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, we learn about the main laws against Jewish people. It talks about the goals of the Nazi party; so, they could exterminate Jewish race entirely one day. The basis of the Nazi party started with the anti-Jewish laws known as ‘‘the four goals’’.  After creating the ‘‘four goals’’, the restrictions for the Jews were present in the country. The Nazi party did not want to see this race again for any reason, so the unbelievable laws left Jews without hope. There were four anti-Jewish goals in which the Nazi party relied on in order to start all the other anti-Jewish laws. Those goals which later became group laws were : Jewish people could not be citizens or foreigners, could not be officials, cannot emigrate, and they could not be editors or owners of property and businesses. The main group laws that ended the hopes of life for the Jews were the second and the third ones. The second group laws by the Nazi party, prohibit relations between Germans and Jewish people. The third group was an office that had all the emigration control over the Jews, so they couldn’t leave the country. The writer emphasizes that these laws were implemented in different ways, this depended on the governors or citizens. Also, the last thing mentioned is that all the invaded places the only one that did not want to implement the laws against Jews was Denmark. Denmark accepted the anti-Jewish laws when Germany tried to deport all of the Jews from Denmark to Germany.

In the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, the article “Auschwitz” describes it as the largest Nazi concentration and Extermination camp. Auschwitz was made up of three parts, Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II and Auschwitz III in which, the majority of the prisoners were Jews, Poles, Germans, and Gypsies. Auschwitz was one of the worst concentration camps where their prisoners were tortured, making them go through hunger, extremely hard work, and exposed to cold and diseases. Also, in this concentration camp there were gas chambers, in which about 6,000 prisoners were murdered a day. How horrible to think that something like this happened, and even more horrible to know that innocent people could not escape this horrible situation. In which, they could be killed or put in a place of torture. The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust explained that the staff were other prisoners who were rewarded if they reinforced the rules of the camp. The rules to follow for these lucky prisoners were that they have to mistreated the other prisoners forcing them to work if they did not they had to shoot them. How can a food or clothing be enough to kill or humiliate someone? This shows us how selfish human beings can be, as carnal pleasures can kill, just to satisfy those carnal needs. (Spector, Rozzet 121-123)

Fig. 2.  US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Three parts of Auschwitz concentration camps. Holocaust Encyclopedia. Web. 28 July 2018.

The Schindler’s List film poster is deeply related to the Holocaust.  The poster is full of dark and opaque colors except for one single detail that is in color red. The biggest thing that can be appreciated in this poster are two hands holding each other. One hand is smaller than the other. The small hand can be clearly seen to be of a child or a girl. This small hand is held by the larger hand, so the other hand can be seen holding the small hand tightly. The small hand holds as it can as if to be more restrained in the strength of the other hand. The only colored detail in the poster is the small hand clothes. Also, on top of the large photo of the hands are some numbers and blurry letters. We can say that it is a list since the name of the film assures us. This list seems to be very old, since it looks like it was made with typewriter. Also, the letters in the list appear to be in another language.

The message that this poster gives with the hands held is the same as the people Oskar Schindler helped. Oskar, being the largest hand, took them and saved the life of more than 1000 Jews. He kept them healthy and working without any kind of humiliation or mistreatment. Simply with the color of the poster can be seen that it is not  a childish film, or comedy but it is an interesting, deep and dark story. Maybe with that type of colors, can be understood that it will be a movie full of sadness, pain, and perhaps death.  What seems to be more important in this porter seems to be the small hand. This is the most important because it has the most place in the poster and the only part where a striking color is seen. Also because it is the thing that most captures your attention. The poster uses pathos to capture the audience attention by using a small hand holding a bigger hand. It tries to touch the heart of the audience just by looking at the small hand.

The words complement the whole poster itself. The long font of the letters makes you go straight to see the little hand. apart from the title there is no other type of lyrics, which makes the audience intrigue even more just by seeing those dark and sad colors. Something important of the movie that was left out was a phrase that was used in the movie, which anyone who has seen the movie touched his heart. This sentence was addressed to Oskar Schindler as he left and everyone thanked him. Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.

Roger Ebert, a famous film critic, gave us an excellent summary of The Schindler's List film. Ebert describes Oskar Schindler as a hero. I imagine it was hard for Ebert to describe how Oskar was only interested in money and disliked the Jews. Ebert describes how on the road to being a millionaire, Oskar sees the need to save Jews. Ebert also talks about the producer of the movie. The only criticism I had was the fact that it was difficult to distinguish when Oskar decided that he would rather save Jews than kill them. Ebert made it seem that Oskar Schindler was not a hero at all. For many, what Ebert said about the movie didn't honor Schindler, it could seem offensive. It could be offensive because what Oskar Schindler did was not easy and he decided to risk everything. In exchange for so many risks, Oskar saves more than a 1000 innocent people. Ebert does not emphasize all this but focuses on the bad habits of Oskar. This does not improve his work, but it makes the audience think that Oskar was good at all. (rogerebert.com)

Ebert was right about Oskar just wanting to convince his Nazi friends to help him start a factory to earn money. The movie shows Oskar as an alcoholic, a smoker, and a womanizer. Soon, he realizes the brutality with which the Jews were treated. With what I do not agree with Ebert is the fact that he does not point out when Schindler stops thinking so selfishly. It is clear that Schindler begins to save Jews in a specific scene of the film. It happens when he sees the girl with the red jacket. The last thoughts from Ebert were about the producer instead of the shocking story of Oskar during the Holocaust. (rogerebert.com) He pays homage to the production of this movie. In this tribute, the producer of the film stands out. Ebert mentions that the producer had great passion to make this film seem so real and brutal. Schindler is not as honored as the producer and the people who survived the Holocaust. Ebert only mentions Oskar's risk a little.

 I totally disagree that Oskar is not recognized for what he did, just because he had bad habits. We all have some bad habits, which often is not to our liking and we fight against it. Ebert excludes Oskar's important value in the film. Without Oskar Schindler, all those people would not have been saved. The great importance of saving more than a 1000 people from being humiliated or killed must be greatly recognized. All those people were a generation that still exists from their offspring. Many had the opportunity to save someone and they did not help, they preferred to keep quiet and kill. Others did not have the courage to say something. Thanks to Oskar Schindler for his great courage and determination to fight for others’ lives.

Works Cited

“Auschwitz.” The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. 1^st edition. 2006. Print.

 “Anti-Jewish Legislation.” The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. 1^st edition. 2006. Print.

Ebert, Roger. “Schindler's List Movie Review (1993) | Roger Ebert.” RogerEbert.com, Leonard Goldberg, 15 Dec. 1993. Web. June 28.

“In the camps.” The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. 1^st edition. 2006. Print.

“Nazi Camps.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Web. June 20 2018.

Mjl. “What Is the Talmud?” My Jewish Learning, My Jewish Learning. Web. June 22 2018

“Oskar Schindler.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 22 July 2016. Web. June 20 2018.

Essay Word Definition

The Schindler's List Movie Poster Analysis