Fluent Essays

I need 2 Discussions. I need 250 words Initial Post and two replies on other students for each Discussion that I will attached later. I attached each topic Discussion readings, Pls read the readings and answer it.  You must use the readings, no outside sources is allowed. Topic 7 How does Suchomal describe the production of death? How does Levi’s account differ from Suchomel’s? What accounts for these differences (in other words, what is informing these different ways of remembering)? Topic 8 Please use the Nanjing Survivor Testimonies to answer the following questions. Be sure to include specific evidence and details from the readings to support your answers. · How do these testimonies help humanize the victims of the massacre? · What do these account offer us about understanding the past and understanding memory? Nanjing Survivor Testimonies Three testimonies from survivors of the Nanjing Atrocities are included below. They are only three of many and each has been translated from Mandarin Chinese. All include memories of extreme acts of violence and trauma. Gender violence is prominent in each testimony. If you are uncomfortable reading about extreme violence and rape, you do not have to read this document. Survivor testimonies—firsthand accounts from individuals who lived through war and atrocities—supplement what we learn from historians and other secondary sources. Their voices offer perspectives on difficult and often unimaginable situations people experienced during war and collective violence. We must remember that testimonies given decades later are voluntarily given and are based on individual experiences and personal memories. They are also self-edited and must be understood and listened to with these factors in mind. At the same time, some scholars suggest that the very thing that makes survivors’ accounts so powerful can also affect their reliability. While some read survivors’ stories as evidence to be weighed along with other sources, we know these accounts offer something more. They teach us not only about the past, but about memory as well. For many people they force a confrontation with the past, reminding us that behind numbers or documentary accounts are human beings. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Testimony of Wen Sunshi My name is Wen Sunshi, this year I turn 82 years old. My house was originally in the Xiaguan district of Nanjing. I was married in 1936 of the Chinese lunar calendar. My husband’s original surname was Guo, but because my family had arranged the marriage, he changed his name to Wen—my surname. When the Japanese entered the city on the December of 1937, many retreating Chinese Nationalist troops attempted to cross the river to escape, with some even coming to my house to board. When the sky was getting dark, my entire family took refuge at the nearby [Hutchinson International]. En route, we saw Japanese warships rake down crossing Chinese troops with indiscriminate machine gun fire. The refugees at the [Hutchinson International] were many. One day, six or seven Japanese troops arrived, all of them armed with guns, knives hanging by their waists. They took six or seven maidens from the crowd of refugees. I was among those taken. There was also a maiden I recognized, her name was Little Qiaozi. One Japanese soldier forced me into an empty room. I can remember him being chubby, with a beard. Once we were both in the room, he used a knife to force me to take off my pants—I would be killed if I didn’t. I was thus raped in this manner. After the rape, the Japanese soldier turned to me and said “opened path, opened path” and I was released. In order to avoid the Japanese soldiers coming again to hurt us, that night, the manager of the [Hutchinson International] ferried us—about eighteen maidens—to the cellar of the Egg Beating room. Those among us also included several maidens who had escaped from the Suzhou prefecture of Jiangsu. I hid in that cellar for several months, with the owners secretly sending me food. Only after the situation was deemed “peaceful” did I return to live with my mother and father. I had lived in the [Hutchinson International] for more than a year before I had returned home. My husband knows that I was raped by a Japanese soldier, but empathizes with me. He passed away a couple of years ago. In my home, I can’t bear to tell my sons and daughters, and I’m worried that other people will find out and look down upon me. At that time, my cousin was only eighteen-years-old. He was taken away by the Japanese troops and never returned. I personally watched as the Japanese troops massacred many people. We had a neighbor, elderly Ms. Zhen, who was about eighty-years-old. She thought that because she was old, she could remain at home and be fine. In actuality, she was brutally murdered by the Japanese, with her stomach slashed open. There was also a tea specialist, who couldn’t bear leaving his home. He was also murdered by the Japanese. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Testimony of Chen Jiashou My name is Chen Jiashou. I was born on September 16, 1918. When the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Nanjing in 1937, I was living in a small Nanjing district with my Uncle, Mother and Father, my two brothers and my sister. At that time, I was only 19 years old. I was an apprentice. After the Japanese invasion, I, along with several other people, collectively escaped to a refugee camp by Shanghai Road. At that time, since the refugee camp had run out of food, I ventured out to replenish the supply. But because of some casual remarks I made while lining up, I was taken by some nearby Japanese soldiers and brought to a pond adjacent to Shanghai Road. Having not stood there for more than two minutes, I watched as a group of armed Japanese soldiers hustled several lines of about two hundred Chinese troops toward the edge of the pond, surrounding them with weapons to prevent them from escaping. At that time, I was also ordered to stand among the front line of Chinese soldiers. I was only 19 years old, and terribly frightened. Thus, the instant the Japanese soldiers opened fire on us all, I immediately fell toward the ground, faking my death. Struck by the flying bullets, my Chinese comrades all piled up on my body. Right up till it got dark and the Japanese soldiers had all left, I lay under the dead bodies, not daring to move. Only then did I climb out from under the pile of bodies. It was thus how I became a fortunate survivor of the Nanjing massacre. I was captured again by the Japanese near Sanhe Village, and sent to work at a Japanese- occupied silk factory near nowadays’ Nanjing medicine factory. It was at this time that I witnessed more Japanese atrocities first-hand. One time, after I finished transporting ten barrels of gasoline to the Japanese military depot near the train station, Japanese soldiers brought me to a basement. Aside from large wooden boxes, the basement also contained a bed. The two Japanese soldiers ripped off the bedsheet covers and indiscriminately opened fire upon it. On the bed lay four women, all dead. Another time, as I came back from transporting provisions, I walked near the main hall of the Nanjing medicine factory. I saw a few hundred ordinary citizens collapsed on the road. Driving a truck, the Japanese troops evidently saw them as well, but simply paid no attention and pretended not to see them. They drove directly over the people, transforming the place into a bloodbath. I will never forget a memory like this: One day after work, I walked to the entrance of Changshan Park. A man surnamed Tse heard the sound of a Japanese truck, so stuck his head out to take a look. Coincidentally, he caught the eyes of the Japanese troops, who immediately disembarked and tied Old Tse up, forcing him to kneel on the ground. One of them took out a bayonet, and violently hacked at Old Tse’s head. Unfortunately, though the back of Old Tse’s neck was sliced through, his head hung on by the remaining front part of his neck—he was still breathing and alive, collapsed on the floor. Seeing this, the Japanese soldiers then raised their leather boots, mercilessly kicking him around the Changshan Park’s grounds. It was only then, with his head severed and his body trashed, that Old Tse passed away. I will never forget the violence, the atrocities and the aggression that the Imperial Japanese soldiers enacted during the Nanjing Massacre. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Testimony of Mr. Chen Deshou. Interviewed by Yanming Lu. Chen: My last name is Chen, spelled with the “ear” and “east”, De is the “de” from virtue, and Shou is the “shou” from longevity. My name is Chen De Shou. Lu: What year were you born? Chen: 1932 Lu: You were born here in Nanjing? Chen: Yes, in Nanjing. Lu: What type of work did your parents do? Chen: My mother was a housewife, my father was in clothing, he owned a clothing store. Lu: What did your grandparents do? Chen: My grandfather was a tailor, he also made clothes. Chen: My grandmother too. Lu: So your family ran a tailoring shop? Chen: No, a clothing shop, a clothing store. Lu: Do you remember what it was like in your family store at the time? Chen: Yes. Lu: Can you talk a little about it? Chen: Life in our household was a full one. There was my paternal grandfather, my paternal grandmother, my parents and a younger brother. My mother was pregnant. My father’s sister also lived with us, and she had two kids who came to live with us. Life was very hard. In 1937, at that time, Japan, the Japanese troops . . . they were setting off bombs, throwing bombs, see at that time, they wanted to . . . to . . . hiding from the planes. Around December of 1937, there were so many people, they fled to escape the troubles. Why didn’t our family go? Because our family was in the clothing ordering business, and my father got a contract to make uniforms for the soldiers, uniforms that were for the local army. This money though, was stuck, so there was no cash, and without the money, you couldn’t escape, right? So we didn’t leave, we lived in this house. Where was our house? It was near Nanjing’s Sanshan Rd, in what is now the street just behind the Gan Family Courtyard. My house was #4. . . . Life was pretty happy and full. Now on December 13, there came change that turned our world upside down. At that time, at the end of the alley, at the end of the alley we lived in, it was called TianQing St. The Japs started a fire, they started a fire at the end of the alley, and the blaze was fierce. My father, being a warm hearted man, he went out to put out the fire. And he never came back. From the moment he left that day, he never came back, he was gone. So only my grandparents, my mother, my aunt, the young and the old, were left at home. On the morning of that day, a Japanese devil took a bayonet, a rifle, and with the bayonet he came in. When he came in, we thought everything was as usual, my grandfather even brought out candies for him, telling him to eat, and treating him as a guest. He said he didn’t want that, he said one sentence: “I want a woman.” My mother was pregnant, with a big belly, so he didn’t want her. He dragged my aunt, and at the time she was nursing my little girl cousin. The house we lived in had 3 rooms, each behind the other, we were in the third, in the third room. He took my aunt, and dragged her from the third room to the second room, he was going to humiliate her, he was about to rape her. My aunt was an educated woman, she would rather die than submit, so she struggled, she struggled with that Japanese devil. Then the devil picked up a knife, and stabbed my aunt, piercing her 6 times, in her thigh as well, she was bleeding there as well as from her chest. At the time when he dragged her to the front, my grandmother, and I was an obedient little boy, she brought me forward, so I witnessed my aunt’s death with my own eyes. I was 6 at the time, only 6, but I was old enough to remember things. My aunt handed my little cousin over to my grandmother, and said, “Mother, my heart aches, please give me some sweetened water.” So my aunt, my grandmother, my grandmother carried my little cousin to the back, and poured a bowl of sweetened water, from the third room to the second and back to the front. When she got there, my aunt had already stopped breathing, she didn’t get to taste the bowl of sweetened water her mother brought. So, just like that, my aunt died. And then that very night, my mother, she gave birth to her child, at that time she gave birth. Giving birth at that time, when there was no one there to help, was extremely difficult. So we stayed at home. At this time, we kept my aunt’s body in the second room, within that room’s entry we put down a door, and her on it, she lay there close to 3 days, we had no other choice, grandfather was old, around 70, he was an old man. We had no one in the house who could work, we couldn’t get a coffin, right. The child my mother bore didn’t have anything to eat, in a few days our household food ran out. The Japanese devils, were really hateful to the extreme, see, he could kill without batting an eyelid. He could rape and kill without batting an eyelid. And then, on the third day, a Japanese soldier arrived—this was a soldier, not a Japanese devil. He had a short gun on him, a short gun. And then he also spoke Chinese, he could understand my grandfather, and he could talk so my grandfather understood. He said that back in Japan he was a shop keeper, not a soldier, he was conscripted, he didn’t have a choice, he was conscripted here, and from the looks of him he wasn’t a soldier, he was a petty official. He took my grandfather out to the streets, found a couple of youths, and then found a few able bodies and went with them to a coffin shop and brought back a coffin to our second room, that is the room before ours, and put my aunt in the coffin. We couldn’t bury her, so we had to put her on the ground open to the sky, like that. And then he took my grandfather, and went out, to a rice shop and a soy sauce shop and found some food, then put it in a bag and carried it back to us, and so we survived this hardest of hard times, see. Now the Japanese devils, they wouldn’t let a single woman off the hook, right. After my mother gave birth, she put the bloodied paper on the floor. When they came they’d want to see it, and after they saw it, they knew she’d had a baby, they didn’t want her and they’d leave. This harassment went on everyday, there was nothing we could do. Prescott Marshall Wiryadinata Prescott Marshall Wiryadinata MondayAug 16 at 10:32pm Manage Discussion Entry Suchomel describes the production of death almost as if it was a factory. When he describes what happens at the concentration camp, he has no sense of remorse in his voice. When he is asked how long it would take for the people to be removed from the train and undressed, he simply replied that it would take An hour, an hour and a half (Topic 7, Lecture 3). Suchomel talks about Treblinka as something that was calculated, stating that In 2 hours, it was all over (Topic 7, Lecture 3). To be able to remember how long it would take exactly to kill an entire train of people shows that Suchomel treated the concentration camp as a machine.  Suchomels account from what happened is entirely different from Levis. Suchomel simply describes his experience as a worker, who did his job in killing. He did not go into much detail into what actually happened in the camps and the gruesome acts that were committed. As Levi describes, Around us, prisoners without rank, swarmed low-raking functionaries, a picturesque fauna (Levi, p. 44). Levi provides descriptions that allow us to look into the production of death. His account gives us insight on what people thought while they were heading towards their demise. Levi goes on to explain There was no time, space, privacy, patience strength (Levi, p. 78). Levis story shows us the true horrors of the concentration camps, while Suchomel glazes over the details.   The two different accounts between Levi and Suchomel are so different because of the situations that they were in. Suchomel really did not have any imminent threat to his life or well-being. He could work without thinking what would happen to him or what atrocities would be committed towards him. Meanwhile, Levi had to live through the hardships of Treblinka and fight for his life. Levi would remember all the horrible events that happened since he was in the middle of it. From Suchomels view, he was merely doing his job. His form of remembering would only consist of the tasks that he was assigned to.  Sources:  Topic 7, Lecture 3  Topic 7 Primo Levi Selections  Levi, P. (1988), The Drowned and the Saved. Summit Books.  Collapse Subdiscussion Preston Matthew Wiryadinata Preston Matthew Wiryadinata MondayAug 16 at 10:20pm Manage Discussion Entry Suchomels viewpoint on the production of death is to help create a place to cause uncountable deaths. In the video, he was able to talk with someone about Trablinka, and he was able to talk as if there were just transporting animals or live-stock to a farm. He mentions that he didnt even know how many people were transported in each cart, and he never really went to the camps when they were in use since he mentions that he didnt even know how women were treated. Levis account was completely different from Suchomels. Levi was someone who survived from these terrible concentration camps. Levi mentions that he and many others had lived for months and years at an animal level: [their] days had been encumbered from dawn to dusk by hunger, fatigue, cold, and fear, and any space for reflection, reasoning, experiencing emotion was wiped out. (Levi, pg. 75) Suchomel only talked about how incredibly cold the concentration camp was even with clothes on. He couldnt care less of anything else because he knew that they were going to die at those concentration camps.