Visual Depictions of Bodies in Nazi Ideology Term Paper

Visual Depictions of Bodies in Nazi Ideology - Term Paper Example The physical effects of starvation of the body include body wasting, susceptibility to disease and eventually death. Starvation physically transforms its victims. Jews were the victims of Nazis food policies. If a body is starved, it will compensate for lack of calorie intake by consuming body fat. Bodies experience rapid weight loss where even their clothing becomes too big for their bodies. One of the articles which record the effects of starvation to bodies of the Jews was Oskar Rosenfeld Ghetto diaries. However, a sign of physical transformation of ghetto inhabitants was an advertisement recorded in the chronicle stating, â€Å"Men’s Collars Taken in a barber shop at 13 Lutomierska Street†. In his Ghetto diaries, Rosenfeld further observed that in the beginning, the abdomen gets loose and eventually sags. A description of victims of starvation in the Divine Comedy as quoted by Piero Camporesi in his work Bread of Dreams similarly took note of the sagging, empty stom ach of the starving further observing how on victims of hunger, â€Å"The flesh becomes thin, and remains attached to the bones like a spider-web.† The Nazis were aware of the murderous effects of their food policies, and they allowed those policies to continue, resulting in the mass execution of the Jews in the ghettos. Nazi ideologues including Himmler, food distribution bureaucrats, regular and special police, among others all played a role in implementing the slow process of extermination of the Jewish people through man-made famine.