In thirteen pages this paper considers how scholars view firsthand Holocaust testimonies in terms of reliability and usefulness in terms of historical validity. Five sources are cited in the bibliography.
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throughout history. Their pursuits to survive as both a people and a religion have been paved with pits and valleys from the time they began the struggle to reclaim
what has been lost to political and social strife. It can readily be argued that the disrespect for human life was at the root of the killing; the Nazis
had no tolerance for those unlike themselves, whom they believed to be the most worthy of all living being. This impression has been left by many a survivor through
verbal, visual and written personal accounts of their respective and collective experiences. How have scholars differed on the historical usefulness and reliability of
these testimonies? For the most part, response has been in favor of the authors, inasmuch as an abundance of cohesion with regard to details that one cannot realistically question
such authenticity. However, there are but a handful of so-called scholars who contend that the Holocaust was nothing but a political hoax conjured up to wreak political havoc.
I. RESPECTING THE PERSONAL TESTIMONY The primary theme of Eli Wiesels Night revolves around the authors objective to keep the image of the
Holocaust clearly and painfully etched in everyones mind so as not to forget the hideous events of such an inhumane period. The manner in which Wiesels story serves to
address the concepts of anti-Semitism, prejudice, racism is to demonstrate how humanity can quite easily become its own worst enemy when people allow untruths to cloud their perception. Indeed,
as a survivor of the Holocaust himself, Wiesel is fully able to transcend the inherent barriers that sometimes exist between image and word as a means by which to deliver