Holocaust Research Paper
In the beginning, the Ladder of Prejudice started with the use of avoidance. Adolf Hitler had a way to talk and make the Germans believe the Jews were causing all the problems in their country. Hitler blamed the Jews for the loss of World War One and the economic crisis happening in their country. A few short months after Hitler rose to power, he enforced the first boycott against Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933. The morning of April 1, uniformed and armed Natzis stood outside of Jewish owned shops. The businesses were were marked with the yellow Star of David, and Jewish shops signs were posted in-front of the all door steps. Many of the signs read “The Jews are our Misfortune” and “Don't buy from the Jews.” Despite
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During the Holocaust prisoners received tattoos at Auschwitz, a concentration camp complex made up of three camps, Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II, and Auschwitz III (“Tattoos and Numbers”). According to Adams, Auschwitz I, housed homosexuals, political opponents, and prisoners of war. Auschwitz II was the biggest of all three camps. Which contained undressing rooms, gas chambers, and ovens working day and night to burn bodies. Auschwitz III was a labor camp, next door to I.G. Farben petrochemical plant. Slave labor ran this camp to produce supplies for the German war effort (22-23). Jewish people arrived day and night, by train to Auschwitz (Sheehan 24). Auschwitz was the only camp that tattooed their prisoners. At first, newly entering prisoners were only assigned a serial number, which was sewn into their clothes (“Tattoos and Numbers”). Once the prisoners arrived, they were separated into two groups, the group on the right and the group on the left. The group on the right was healthy enough to work in labor camps, while the group on the left was sent to the gas chambers. Everything about the Auschwitz camp was made to seem calm and relaxing. The gas chambers were meant to look like showers. The prisoners were even driven to the gas chambers in cars that looked like ambulances. Prisoners who were sent straight for gas chambers were not registered, nor received a serial number. Prisoners selected …show more content…
Since death rates were increasing, they started to tattoo the Jews once they arrived. To tattoo the prisoners the SS officers first used a metal stamp with interchangeable numbers to puncture the skin. The ink was then rubbed into the wound. Most of the tattoos were received on the left forearm of the vitium. Once the stamp was found useless, they started using a single needle. The needle was used to pierce the serial digits onto their skin. Auschwitz tattoed more than 400,000 serial numbers onto prisoners arms during the
Imagine the worst torture possible. Now imagine the same thing only ten times worse; In Auschwitz that is exactly what it was like. During the time of the Holocaust thousands of Jewish people were sent to this very concentration camp which consisted of three camps put into one. Here they had one camp; Auschwitz I; the main camp, Auschwitz II; Birkenau, and last is Auschwitz III; Monowitz. Each camp was responsible for a different part but all were after the same thing; elimination of the Jewish race. In these camps they had cruel punishments, harsh housing, and they had Nazi guards watching them and killing them on a daily basis.
Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.
The Holocaust or the Ha-Shoah in Hebrew meaning ‘the day of the Holocaust and heroism’ refers to the period of time from approximately January 30,1933, when Adolf Hitler became the legal official of Germany, to May 8,1945. After the war was over in Europe, the Jews in Europe were being forced to endure the horrifying persecution that ultimately led to the slaughter of over 6 million Jews with about 1.5 million of them being children as well as the demolition of 5,000 Jewish communities.
"Tattoos and Numbers: The System of Identifying Prisoners at Auschwitz." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed on 15 Mar. 2011.
For some, it seems that the Holocaust in another lifetime, but for others it will be something they will never forget. Holocaust was a time for fighting. The Jewish would fight for the right to live as they were killed solely for being Jewish. The Holocaust began in 1939 and would continue through 1945. It was introduced by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, although he did not act alone. His mission would be to “exterminate” all minorities, but most abundantly, the Jews. Based on information given by About.com, it is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews.
Fascism is one type of political system based on the notion that some races are superior to others. Something that seems ridiculous in to enlightened modern day thinkers, which unfortunately makes it all the more difficult to try and understand for someone who has not experienced it. However by looking through history and taking into account some of the results of practised fascism, we can maybe begin to understand why so many people took up, and are still taking up fascism. Hopefully then we can understand exactly what we should learn from it, and possibly understand how we can prevent it appearing on the scale it did in the Second World War.
“Concentration camps (Konzentrationslager; abbreviated as KL or KZ) were an integral feature of the regime in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). The living conditions in these camps were absolutely horrible. The amount of people being kept in one space, amongst being unsanitary, was harsh on the body. “A typical concentration camp consisted of barracks that were secured from escape by barbed wire, watchtowers and guards.
Prejudice and the Holocaust Prejudice was the main factor that led to the holocaust. For some, resisting these forms of oppression was survival. Considering the dehumanizing the Nazis had forced upon the Jews, people took whatever courage and strength they had to get through this period of time. I believe luck also had a part to play in survival.
Superiority and discrimination have been the underlying problem in many world-wide events throughout history leading into present day. Whether it be a caste system issue or a race issue, there’s always a group that labels themselves greater than that of another. This affair was apparent in 1940s Germany. The German people would be persuaded into a dictatorship led by Adolf Hitler, who while in power would give rise to Nazism, allowing the mistreatment of Jews to commence. This extermination would be known as “The Holocaust” translated to “sacrifice by fire” and would affect many different people groups during and after the event.
All the Jews had to wear all the same clothing so that they could be
The Holocaust, a Greek word meaning sacrifice by fire, was the systematic, genocidal killing of over six million Jews and five million non-jews that was carried by the Nazi regime in its attempt to take complete control of Europe. During this time, Jews and other groups such as Roma, Slovaks, Russians, etc. were deemed as racially inferior and, therefore, needed to be exterminated in order to purify German society and protect the Aryan race. Ultimately, the Nazi regime took the lives of eleven million innocent people on these grounds, and, now, decades later, the world still demands justice for those who where murdered as part of this horrific plot. On these grounds, Oskar Gröning, a former SS member at Auschwitz extermination camp, is being
SS soldiers used the small stamps, which held twos, two threes and a six or a nine. It was very painful and you bled, then you were scarred. People would scream and cry. After the tattoos, you were given your prison uniform and your head was shaved. The needles were only a couple centimeters long and was easy and fast to use. You could quickly give somebody a tattoo because with this way of tattooing you punch an entire sequence of numbers in one blow. If you were given a tattoo you were considered lucky, and it was actually a compliment. It meant you were in good shape and you were strong. If you were sick, out of shape and not fit, or too young or too old you were sent directly to the gas chambers. Many lives were lots, and families were torn apart by this.
“All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach,” Adolf Hitler (The National World War Museum). The German Nazi dictator utilized his power over the people using propaganda, eventually creating a sense of hatred towards Jews. After World War 1, the punishments of the League of Nations caused Germany to suffer. The Nazi party came to blame the Jews in order to have a nationwide “scapegoat”. This hatred and prejudice towards Jews is known as anti-semitism.
Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba were both Slovak Jews who escaped Auschwitz on April 7, 1944 after spending two years there (Wetzler 1). They immediately published their report in multiple languages with the help of the Jewish council in Slovakia, with the goal of warning the world about the concentration camps. (Wetzler 1). The deportation of Hungarian Jews began soon after the report was published, and 440,000 were sent to Auschwitz within two months (Wetzler 1). The report first described Wetzler’s account of the camp. He said that the prisoners all had a number tattooed on their left wrist, and each of them wore a uniform with a different colored triangle representing what type of person they were (Wetzler 3). For example, green meant criminal, pink meant homosexual, red meant political prisoner, and Jews were marked with a second upside down triangle to represent the Star of David (Wetzler 3). The entrance of the camp had a sign that translates to “Work will set you free”, and the prisoners were forced to memorize a song about how they must all perform labor at the same pace (Wetzler 3). This was part of the brainwashing that the Nazis did in order to pacify the population of prisoners. They were meant to think that by pleasing the guards through hard labor, they would be set free, but this was a
In these camps that these people were sent to, the Germans identified each respective group with a triangular patch sewn onto the people’s clothes. Each patch would have a color, denoting each person into their respective groups. There were also letters placed onto the patches which showed the country of origin of each person.