The Era of Suffering: The Holocaust

Throughout the Holocaust, Jewish people suffered in numerous and various ways. Jews suffered as a part of the Nazi plotted “Final Solution.” The Final Solution was a plan during World War II to systematically exterminate the Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Europe. This resulted in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the destruction of Jewish communities in continental Europe. The leader of the Nazi regime was Adolf Hitler, who believed there was a perfect race, which was the Aryan race (Bohm 4). The Aryan race had blue eyes and blonde hair, although Hitler himself was not an Aryan. Throughout the Holocaust, Jewish people suffered physically, psychologically, and financially.

Jews endured physical suffering through the Holocaust. As a part of the Final Solution, Jews were forced against their will to leave the lives they previously had behind and live in concentration camps. In both types of concentration camps, work camps and death camps, suffering was persistent. Captives in concentration camps were commonly worked to death or simply killed by a Schutzstaffel officer, a protection squadron operating underneath Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s rule, for no logical reason (Ariel 2). Another horrid way Jews were murdered was in a gas chamber. Jews were usually told they were going to a shower room, when in actuality, they were slowly being killed by Zyklon B, a powerful poison that caused painful death within ten minutes of inhalation and physical contact. Sometimes, Jewish people were stored as wild animals on railroad cars for days, without even a drop of water or a crumb of bread.

"Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle ca...

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Works Cited

Ariel, Yaakov. "Jewish Suffering And Christian Salvation: The Evangelical-Fundamentalist Holocaust Memoirs." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 6.1 (1991): 63-78. Print.

Bohm, P. "Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide, Claudia Card (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Xix 329 Pp., Paperback, $35.00, Electronic Version Available." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26.1 (2012): 159-61. Print.

Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. New York: Bantam, 1993. Print.

"Jewish Life during the Holocaust." Jewish Life during the Holocaust. The Holocaust Center, n.d.Web. 07 Apr. 2014.

"Suffering Throughout The Holocaust." Welcome to the Florida Holocaust Museum. Florida Holocaust Museum, n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2014.

Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.