Holocaust: Destruction of the Jewish People

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Jewish Holocaust; The Nazi regime and its collaborators planned the total destruction of the Jewish people. However, during the Holocaust Jews were not the only targets of discrimination. While allied and axis soldiers fought in battlefields, the Nazis waged a war against unarmed people. They killed Russian prisoners of war, communists, Jehovah’s witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals, Serbs, cripples, the mentally Ill, beggars and they killed Jews, an estimated six million Jews. The Murder of these Jews became known as the Holocaust.

Adolf Hitler was the Nazis leader and he detested Jews. Hitler believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, considered "inferior," were an alien threat to the German racial community. Hitler blamed Jews for the troubles of Germany and felt it was his duty to extinguish every Jew from society. Adolf Hitler was born in Austria on April 20, 1889. In 1913 Adolf Hitler moved to Germany where he enlisted in the German Army. In 1919 Adolf Hitler began his campaign for power in Germany. January 28, 1933 the president of Germany at the time; Paul Von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler to be Chancellor of Germany. Hitler was not satisfied being head of his country’s government. He would be Germany’s absolute ruler, its dictator.

After the Nazi party achieved power in Germany in 1933, its state-sponsored racism produced anti-Jewish legislation, economic boycotts, and the violence of the ‘Kristallnacht’ ("Night of Broken Glass") all of which aimed to systematically isolate Jews from society and drive them out of the country. Nazis persecution of Jews began in 1933. Soon after Hitler came to power, prison camps were set up. Dachau was established as the...

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...d breathing. They were placed naked in ice water until they froze to death. They were kept in a vacuum until their lungs burst. At Auschwitz, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele was brutal. He enjoyed performing excruciating experiments on prisoners; mostly twins. Three thousand twins suffered through his often painful and deadly experiments. Only 157 survived.

There were acts of heroism during the holocaust people in France and Italy helped Jews hide from Nazis. Catholic priests and nuns in Belgium saved some children.

Works Cited
I. The Holocaust by Frank McDonough with John Cochrane

II. The Holocaust: Personal Accounts Edited by David Scrase and Wolfgang Mie Der

III. We Remember the Holocaust by: David A. Adler

IV. The Holocaust in Historical Context: Volume 1 by Steven T. Katz

V. The Holocaust Introductory Essays Edited by David Scrase and Wolfgang Mie Der

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