A Jewish Journey

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Recommended: The Holocaust causes and consequences

December 13, 2013

Research Paper

A Jewish Journey

In 1933, Adolf Hitler, a leader of the Nazi Party, rose to power in Germany. The Nazi Party abused their power in many different aspects, which creating issues beyond Germany’s borders. This abuse of power lead to the horrific event we know today as the Holocaust. The Holocaust caused over eleven million deaths, with approximately one million of them being children. The Nazis targeted certain groups of individuals including Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, mentally or physically disabled, and anyone who did not agree with Nazi Party. The Nazi Party had excessive power, which was used to undermine the others below them. Out of all of the individuals who were targeted by the Nazis; the Jewish were the most discriminated against. Six million out of the eleven million executed were Jews. The journey of the Jews through a span of only fifteen years showed how one event in history could be so crucial. Jewish individuals’ lives took a toll for the worse as the Nazis rose to power.

Before the rise of the Nazi Party, Jews lived in every country of Europe. Some basic distinction nonetheless structured the European Jewish scene. The main dividing line ran between Eastern European and Western Jewries: though geographic to a point, its manifest expression was cultural. The Eastern European Jews primarily lived in Poland, the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Romania in small town or villages, known as shtetls. They spoke a language that was a combination of German and Hebrew, in which they called Yiddish. Yiddish was a very popular language to the Jews, books were written in this language and there where theaters that screened Yiddish speaking films. The older Jewish men wore ...

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... had no remorse for their actions during the time of the Holocaust. Still today, the Nazis’ actions cannot be forgiven by those who were mistreated and killed. There has been justice served for the Jewish survivors and their stories will always be a reminder of the harshest time within their life along with millions of other people.

Bibliography

Friedländer, Saul. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939 -

1945. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 2007.

Jones, David H. Moral Responsibility in the Holocaust: A Study in the Ethics of

Character. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 1999.

Langer, Lawrence L. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. New

Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1991.

Des Pres, Terrence. The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps. New

York: Oxford University Press. 1976.

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