Estefania
Velez
GVPT200
- Shirk
Ontological
Security
When one thinks of security, the first things that
typically come to mind are the military, protection from terrorism, freedom and
human rights. But what about the security of the way one views oneself? The protection
of each person’s way of life? Many often overlook this type of security because
it is something that is not commonly threatened. The way the Nazi Party of
Germany terrorized the Jewish people’s ontological security during its prime
from 1933 through 1945 caused a whole ethnic group to worry about whether their
religion would still exist after the Holocaust by forcing many to change their
way of life and what they believed in in order to survive.
Religion is the main reason why this
mass group of people were so brutally tortured and killed for over a decade.
Many Jews knew that death was inevitable for the majority of their people and
they could not help but wonder: is there still hope for Judaism? Will our
ethnicity still exist after this? Hitler
chose this group to be widely massacred because of what they worshipped and
because he knew that he had the power to do so. They not only had to question
who they were, but also where the future of their worship stood. This is the
biggest form of threat to their ontological security because they had to give
up hope in the thing that they believed gave them life: Judaism.
In early November of 1938, the night of broken dreams
took place as the Nazi party went around Germany and destroyed Jewish homes,
businesses, schools and synagogues. About one hundred Jews were killed that
night and thirty thousand were arrested because of what they believed in. Their
way of life changed drastically because they were both arrested and sent to
concentration camps, or because everything they knew – synagogues, shops,
schools – were gone. The Jewish people did not have any ontological and
physical protection to defend them from the threats that forced them both to
move away and try to start new lives before things got worse or to fight back
and defend what they believed in.
As the Nazi party began to send the Jewish people to
concentration camps in 1941, those who had plans to flee Germany and start new
lives elsewhere had to constantly question their identity and beliefs for the
sake of survival. By moving away, changing their names and forcefully lying about
their religion, they came to an identity crisis that caused them to not know
whether what they believed in was correct, whether or not they were good people
for believing these things or who they truly were when it came to religion. One
should not be forced to question ones identity because the government is
killing everyone who practices the same beliefs the way the Nazi’s threatened
the Jewish people’s ontological security by making them question who they truly
are as people and as Judaists.
Ontological security is important because it is how
people define and see themselves. The
lack of protection they had for their way of life and beliefs affected many
generations of Jews later. It was bad enough that the Jewish people of that
time period had to worry about their physical security, but to have to question
who they were and what they believed in in order to not get killed is horrendous.
Lacking this type of security goes to show that one can look completely fine on
the outside but not knowing who one is on the inside is the biggest threat of
all.
I agree with you and Shiran. Hitler used the Jewish population as a scapegoat for the problems Germany was facing after WWI. The Holocaust undoubtedly resulted on an ontological attack on the Jewish population. I think that you made a good point when you said that one can seem to be fine, but they might be experiencing the "biggest threat of all" from the inside. I agree that the Jewish people not only experienced physical harm, but they were also psychologically threatened.
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