Magazine Article About Raoul Wallenberg
It takes a very special person to resist the commands of something as powerful as the Nazis during the Holocaust, but it was done by a man by the name of Raoul Wallenberg. Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish Diplomat that was in power during the Holocaust. There are many psychological influences on a person in power especially at a time like the Holocaust. It would be easy to be a normal bystander and say it’s not my problem why should I intervene, but Wallenberg resisted that effect and used all in his power to help people that needed it most.
Wallenberg put forth many efforts to help the Jewish people. He used his political power to benefit the Jews in ways that normal people could not. In March 1994, Wallenberg was doing work in Hungary while it was being invaded by the Germans. The invade was led by a man named Adolf Eichmann. A few hundred thousand Hungarian Jews were at risk of being shipped off to Auschwitz or other death camps, and Wallenberg was ordered by Sweden to issue protective passports to the Jews that had relatives in Sweden. Wallenberg felt like they needed to be doing more to help the people. He received word from an unofficial source that he could issue passports to anyone, so he jumped on the opportunity. He allotted a passport to anyone that asked, and he ended up saving a few hundred thousand lives. After distributed passports, Wallenberg mediated and pressured Eichmann until he was revealed of the mission to exterminate the Jews in Hungary. The futures of Hungarian Jews improved tenfold, and it was all because of the acts of Wallenberg.
Another prestigious act committed by Wallenberg was a mass harboring of Jewish victims. At the time helping Jews in any way was punishable by death, especially when you were hiding them, but Wallenberg did it anyway. The Swedish Legation rented about ten buildings and called them “The Swedish Library” and “The Swedish Research Institute”. In these buildings Wallenberg ran the harboring of thousands of Jews. Wallenberg was then set to evacuate Budapest, but the leader of the Arrow Cross organization was over thrown. Wallenberg went on to develop 30 more houses called “The Swedish Houses”, and the population soon rose to 15,000 rescued Jews. Meanwhile he was still distributing protective passports, but they were invalidated. So, Wallenberg made friends with the wife of the foreign minister, Elizabeth “Liesel” Kemeny. With the help of her and her husband the passports were validated and Jews were once more allowed to flee.
At a time like the Holocaust there are many psychological influences that effect the actions or motives of people. Most of the time these influences have negative effects that cause people to do terrible things. It takes a very strong person to resist these influences. Raoul Wallenberg was one of the few people that did reject these influences. One of the large influences that Wallenberg was subject to was the bystander effect. The bystander effect happens when people see an action that is wrong and could be stopped but choose to do nothing. This effect shows itself very well in events like genocide. When many people are being killed and many people could stop it many choose to let it happen. Most people that are bystanders do not just sit by and watch because they do not care, but most people are afraid to intervene because of other consequences. For example during the murder of Kitty Genovese 38 people witnessed her get stabbed and did nothing. After the incident the police interviewed some of the witnesses one housewife said, “We thought it was a lovers’ quarrel.”(Martin Gansberg March 27, 1964, New York Times “38 Who Saw a Murder”). The people seemed to make up lame excuses such as, “We went to our window to see what was happening, but the light from our bedroom made it difficult to seethe street.” (“38 who saw a murder”) The people seemed to not care seeing that it did not effect themselves, but looking back most people were regretful that they easily could have called the cops but chose to do nothing. This indecent was a good example of what most people did during the Holocaust. Most people sat there and watched many people get slaughtered, and I think that if more people had resisted this urdge than plenty of people could have been saved.
In the Holocaust people that were found helping the Jews unlawfully were killed or prosecuted, and this was a very good deterrent to stop most people. Wallenberg withstood these influences at the risk of consequences. Wallenberg was said to have had a strong compassion for anything breathing. His motives to resist the bystander effect was helping anyone in need and he did not want to give up or fail his assignment. Wallenberg once said, “To me there’s no other choice. I’ve accepted this assignment and I could never return to Stockholm without the knowledge that I’d done everything in human power to save as many Jews as possible.”(Wallenberg, 1945) He was even seen running on moving railways that were shipping people to death camps, and slipping protective passports through slots in the roof. Through selfless methods like these he never let anyone die if it could be stopped.
In 1945, Raoul Wallenberg went mysteriously missing on the way to the Soviet Union Headquarters. He was believed to have been imprisoned by the Soviets, but there is now clear reason to why he would have been prosecuted. Wallenberg was said to have been shot in prison in 1947. To this day his death is unclear and no one will ever be sure what really happened, but his noble actions will never be forgotten.
Artist Statement
At times when society seems to be at it’s lowest there are few people that step up and risk themselves to help others. Like most genocides the Holocaust was a horrific time for most citizens. In the 40's a genocide was launched on Jews, gypsies, cripples, gays, and other such minorities. Adolph Hitler had a distinct idea of the perfect Arian race, and he wanted to rid Germany and the world of the impurities that were said to be bringing Germany down. Also, the Jews were blamed for all of Germany's economical and military problems. Once Hitler launched the genocide the minorities were sought out and displaced to death camps and labor camps. Many tried to flee and hide, but it was frowned upon by the Nazi regime. Any person that was part of Hitler's master race that was caught helping the impurities in any was prosecuted or killed, but there were a few select people that did help others even though it was at the risk of consequence. When I look back on times like these when society seemed to be in a pit of despair I like to focus on the people who had a positive influence. It is terrible to think that millions of people were killed in a matter of years, but it is nice to learn about the people that did whatever they could to help those in need. That is why in my project I focused on heroes of the Holocaust.
During the research phase of this project I focused on some heroes and the things that they did to help victims. There were two men that stood out in my mind that did exceptional things to help. These men were Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg. Both of these men did exceptional things to save the countless people in need. Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish politician and he used his power to help people. In “Heroes of the Holocaust and Their Stories of Courage,” Diego describes how Wallenberg harbored Jewish people: “ He rented more than 30 buildings to house about 10,000 Jewish refugees, putting up fake signs as “The Swedish Research Institute” and hanging the Swedish flag to avoid detection.” This action really touched me because he used his own money and authority to help the victims of the Holocaust. Plus, if Wallenberg was caught doing this he could be stripped of his power and killed by the Nazis.
Another great deed done by a hero was done by Oskar Schindler. Schindler was a Nazi, but he did not support the movement. He actually worked against the Nazis to help the Jews. Schindler owned a work factory and the Nazis would ship him Jews to work on the lines. However, Schindler did not treat them like they were in a concentration camp. He treated them fairly well for being Jewish during the Holocaust. Schindler put on many acts to satisfy the Nazis “Schindler grabbed my jacket and slapped my face, shouting get back to work! It was an act. Schindler never hit anyone or raised his voice. If Goeth had found my sitting down he would have shot me on the spot.”(Holocaust Survivor) Schindler did many little things to help the people in his camp, and all of the Jews were thankful because they would be starved and killed in any other camp. These selfless actions interested me and that is why I chose to focus on heroes of the Holocaust.
This research helped me shape my project because I wanted to find the best way to inform people of the great deeds that these men committed, so I figured the best way to inform people is to write an informational article. My partner and I decided to write an article for each man about the things that they did and how they helped people in their time of need. During the research we came across great stories and accounts about each of the men, so we thought we could pass these on to our audience. Plus, we figured sense we are making a magazine we could make meaningful pictures of the men to put next to the article. We decided that we could honor the men in the pictures as well as the articles.
I am very creative and visual, and I had probably the most fun designing the magazine. I especially liked making the pictures of Schindler and Wallenberg on Photoshop. It was really fun to mesh different pictures into sort of a collage that symbolized each man. Plus, I learned more about the tools and tricks of photoshop and Adobe Indesign. My partner and I made the pictures and the cover together, but we each wrote an article on either Wallenberg or Schindler. A big skill I learned from writing the article was free writing or writing without guidelines. Usually when I write for school I have a prompt or a rubric to follow, but for this I had to decide the things I wanted to include and inform the reader about. It was hard to do but I feel like it made me a stronger writer because of it. I like the fact that we created a mock magazine. It made me feel like I was working for News Week. I really like the balance of the project I feel like the two articles and two pictures really balance each other out, and it replicates an actual special article in a magazine.
Works Cited
-Diego, Ed. "Heroes of the Holocaust and Their Stories of Courage." SocyBerty. GE, 2 Oct. 2008. Web. 3 Dec. 2010. <http://socyberty.com/history/heroes-of-the-holocaust-and-their-stories-of-courage/>.
-"Okar Schindler- Rescuer of 12,000 Jews." Oskar Schindler's Legacy. N.p., 2004. Web. 6 Dec. 2010. <http://www.oskarschindler.dk/legacy/content1.html>.
Genocide Project Reflection
When I look back on my project I am most proud of the article that I wrote. My partner and I each wrote an article about a certain hero of the holocaust. I wrote about a man by the name of Raoul Wallenberg. The article was an informational article about his heroic actions and the motives that allowed him to do such things. I am especially proud of this article because I wrote it with no guidelines or rubrics. The majority of the time that I write things for school I follow a list of things that I need to include, but with this article it all came from my head. At first it was hard to start writing, but once I thought about what I wanted to include informing the audience I picked it right up. In the end, I was really proud of how the article turned out.
If I had one more week to work on the project I would add more variety to the magazine. We only had just enough time to finish our articles and get them into the magazine. I would have like to add more fun things on the side. Such as, a few more photos of heroes, a horoscope section, some funny adds, or an article on something not related to the holocaust like a hot gossip piece. I just feel like the magazine would have been more fun to read and it would have been more fun to make if there were some times were you could read something that was not so serious.
Out of the categories on the rubric I would say that our project was strongest in professionalism. The category states that the project is neat, clean, and polished. At a first glance at the magazine you can see that the cover is neat and organized; there is not much clutter to stray your eye from the picture and title. Also, we chose a color scheme that sort of fit with the Holocaust theme. This added to the visual effect of the outlines and titles. As you start reading the articles and observing the pictures you can see that there are no out of place words or things that do not fit. All the articles fit almost perfectly in the text box that they were assigned, and we took special care to make sure that they layout was pleasing to the eye and the mind. Seeing that we did all of the work on a computer it was very easy to keep things neat and free of errors.
If there is one category that we could hove improved it would be the focus category. The focus category states that the project relays a clear message. Now the righting was focused and clear, but we did not really right it to have a message. We wrote the articles with out a thesis. We sort of took a more informational approach and we informed the reader about the actions and the social psychology of the Holocaust. Our goal was to inform the reader about the two men and the effect of psychological pressures during the Holocaust. Sure, the reader received the message that the men did amazing things to help, but we did not write the articles to try and say that the men should have done more or less or something different to help. To improve this area we could have taken a stand if the actions should have been different. We could have made an argument to say that this person should have done more to help and this country should have given him more support to do it.
My final grade for this project should be an A, specifically a 90%. Based on the rubric our project scored fairly well, it got three A's and two B's. I gave our project this score because I felt like we did a good job in hitting all of the categories with the exception of organization and development. I gave us a B on the organization because I felt like my article did not have the smoothest transitions. I gave our project a B on the development because I did not provide my perspective on things. However, I felt like we did very well in all of the other categories and we worked very hard on the project. Plus, the project was done on time and the final project looks professional. All in all, I think that I deserve a 90% on the project.
