Lest We Forget
Bold, black, capitalized letters seized the top portion of the April 18, 2014 USA Today newspaper; “OUTRAGE AS JEWS TOLD TO REGISTER IN EAST UKRAINE.” The article reported leaflets were handed to Jews as they left their synagogue in the politically unstable Ukraine. The message, reminiscent of another time and another place, caused many to pause and reflect on the German concentration camps of World War II and the Holocaust. The atrocities of Dachau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald, labor, prisoner of war and death concentration camps implemented under Hitler’s New Order must be deeply etched in memories for fear they be replicated.
Adolph Hitler, Chancellor of Nazi Germany, set out to conquer Europe and become the Third Reich or third empire in history. He designed a policy, the New Order, in an effort to rule over all of Europe and other nationalities (Cantrell 771). There were three main elements to the Order: (1) plundering, (2) slavery, (3) Endlosung or “Final Solution” (Cantrell 771). During the World War II invasion, the Nazis pilfered valuable belongings of the defeated people and drove them into slavery. The third element, Endlosung, or “final solution”, was the organized, systematic and brutal effort to find and exterminate all the Jews in Europe to “remove their unremediable polluting effect from humankind” (Cantrell 771). In January 1939 Hitler said if a European war broke out it would result in “the annihilation of the Jewish race throughout Europe” (Cantrell 772). On September 1, 1939 Nazi German soldiers unleashed the blitzkrieg or “lightning war” on Poland (Cantrell 725). In 1942 the Nazis began slaughtering men, women and children, most of which were Jewish (Cantrell 772). From the onset of Third Reich 1...
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Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
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Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
The Third Reich sought the removal of the Jews from Germany and eventually from the world. This removal came in two forms, first through emigration, then through extermination. In David Engel’s The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews, he rationalizes that the annihilation of the Jews by the Germans was a result of how Jews were viewed by the leaders of the Third Reich-- as pathogens that threatened to destroy all humanity. By eliminating the existence of the Jews, the Third Reich believed that it would save the entire world from mortal danger. Through documents such as Franzi Epsteins’s, “Inside Auschwitz-A Memoir,” in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, one is able to see the struggle of the Jews from a first-hand account. Also, through Rudolf Hoess’s “Commandant of Auschwitz,” one is able to see the perspective of a commandant in Auschwitz. In Auschwitz: A History, Sybille Steinbacher effectively describes the concentration camp of Auschwitz, while Hermann Langbein’s People in Auschwitz reflects on Rudolf Hoess’s power and control in Auschwitz as commandant. Through these four texts, one is able to see the effects that the Third Reich’s Final Solution had on the Jews and the commandants.
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Cruel. Hellish. Inhumane. These three words describe life in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler’s "Final Solution" was to exterminate the Jews; among other groups including the Gypsies, mentally ill or disabled, and homosexuals. This “solution” would take place in hundreds of secret concentration camps throughout all of Europe. Auschwitz is one example of Nazi cruelty forced on people they viewed as inferior. The Nazi regime rose to power on January 30, 1933, making Adolf Hitler chancellor. He quickly turned his presidential rule into a dictatorship. Then he set upon his goal of making the perfect race by using widespread propaganda to spread the regime's ideals and goals. They made fast work to get there plan under way and start, as they called it, “The Finial Solution.”
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