After Germany lost World War I, it was in a national state of humiliation. Their economy was in the drain, and they had their hands full paying for the reparations from the war. Then a man named Adolf Hitler rose to the position of Chancellor and realized his potential to inspire people to follow. Hitler promised the people of Germany a new age; an age of prosperity with the country back as a superpower in Europe. Hitler had a vision, and this vision was that not only the country be dominant in a political sense, but that his ‘perfect race’, the ‘Aryans,’ would be dominant in a cultural sense. His steps to achieving his goal came in the form of the Holocaust. The most well known victims of the Holocaust were of course, the Jews. However, approximately 11 million people were killed in the holocaust, and of those, there were only 6 million Jews killed. The other 5 million people were the Gypsies, Pols, Political Dissidents, Handicapped, Jehovah’s witnesses, Homosexuals and even those of African-German descent. Those who were believed to be enemies of the state were sent to camps where they were worked or starved to death. 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. The Roma Gypsies, like the Jews, were chosen for complete genocide. Both groups of people were chosen completely based on their respective race. The Roma gypsies were not characterized by religion like the Jews, however, like the Jews; they were not respected throughout history and wer... ... middle of paper ... ...ny brought in Africans to help fight the war and some of these Africans married German women and had children. These children were labeled as ‘Rhineland Bastards.’ ‘Hitler said he would eliminate all the children born of African-German descent because he considered them an “insult” to the German nation’ (Non-Jewish Victims). The Nazi Party set up another secret group to ‘sterilize’ the children in hospitals. They would pull kids out of school and sometimes, without their parents’ knowledge. In all, there were only about 400 children ‘sterilized’ throughout the holocaust. Works Cited Schwartz, Terese Pencak. "The Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims." Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust. Jewish Virtual Library. Web. 16 May 2014. "A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims. University of South Florida. Web. 19 May 2014.
“The Holocaust: 36 Questions & Answers About the Holocaust.” 36 Questions & Answers About the Holocaust. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2014
"Holocaust Encyclopedia." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
"History of the Holocaust - An Introduction." Jewish Virtual Library - Homepage. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Web. 8 July 2010. .
The concentration camps and labor camps, also referred to as “extermination sites,” were scattered all across Europe (Hunt 865). While a few in Poland were designed strictly for the immediate genocide of certain groups of Jews, such as Auschwitz, other camps were designated for labor from the captured Jews, until their services were no ...
German children would grow up under the impression that the Holocaust was “sins of their Fathers” and would be expected to deny the existence of the event. Studies show that most German children did not in fact think anything of the lack of Jewish in their environment due to the denial by their own people5. During the time of the Holocaust, the media and education was very meticulously manipulated to where it wasn’t as obvious as to what was taking place. German schools would educated pupils in a way that portrayed Hitler as good and Jews as different. Hitler also would found something known as the Hitler youth program in which the German children would attend in order to have early learning and military training. Youth were taught at a young age to respect the government and the leader, and would not be allowed to complete any action or thought that could conclude mistrust or suspicion to authority. The kids would live a life of mistrust and oblivious thinking due to events of the Holocaust, these practices have been passed down to further generations as
According to A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust, the nomadic people from northwest India, also known as gypsies, were included in the implementation of Hitler’s race laws. They were deprived of civil rights, deported to ghettos, and later taken to concentration camps to be killed [“Victims”]. Roma gypsies were chosen for total annihilation, like the Jews, all because of their race. The Germans believe that the gypsies were racially inferior and degenerate, therefore worthless to the state [“Non-Jewish”]. Along with sending them to concentration camps and ghettos, many gypsies in Russia, Poland, and the Balkans were shot by the Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany [“Victims”].
“One of the most extraordinary aspects of Nazi genocide was the cold deliberate intention to kill children in numbers so great that there is no historical precedent for it.” (Lukas, 13 Kindle) About 1.5 million children were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust—one million being killed because they were Jews (ushmm.org) The Germans had a clearly defined goal of killing the Jewish children so that there would be no remnants of their race to reproduce, resulting in extinction. Not only were the children that were victimized in the Holocaust persecuted and murdered, but they were all stripped of their childhood. Children were not allowed to be children—they had to, for their own survival, be adults. The oppression of children because of race was a direct result of Hitler’s cruel policies and beliefs. In order to stifle the Jewish race from growing, the children were the first to be slaughtered at extermination camps (ushmm.org).
The main victims of genocide during the Holocaust were the Jewish; however, they were not the only ones. Gypsies, also known as the Roma, also made up a large portion of the casualties that occurred in concentration camps. This innocent group of people, who move from place to place, who listened to different music and had different morals and beliefs, were also victims of the mass genocide led by Adolf Hitler. They were targeted and seen as “unhygienic, antisocial nuisances” (Tarr) and were a threat to the Nazis’ ideal German society. And since the Nazis thought they must do something about the Gypsies, this is what they did, all starting in 1899 (Rosenburg): they pinned each gypsy down by making identification papers for each individual, categorizing them by hair and eye color and cranium size, fingerprinted each person, made family trees of the gypsy families, then forced them into settling permanently into flats causing them to sell their caravans and belongings, forcibly sterilizing some individuals, and eventually sending them to concentration camps and murdering them.
Many people tend to think of the slaughtering of Jews when they think about the Holocaust, but during the time of Nazi Germany, non-Jews also struggled to get by. Markus Zusak tells a story of a Christian family hiding a Jew in his bestseller, The Book Thief. This quote from The Book Thief exemplifies the struggles of sheltering a Jew during the Holocaust: “A Jewish corpse was a major problem. The
He looked to them and the Communists as the reason Germany had fallen and been punished. He punished them by getting rid of them and sending them to Ghettos, execution camps, and concentration camps. Killing over 6 million in his all of his camps. A new study shows that over 15 million other victims were killed in the Holocaust. One of the biggest mass killings in the history of the world. The word Holocaust means “ sacrifice by fire”. Also another word used mostly in this subject is Shoah meaning “ devastation, ruin, or waste”. The Nazi’s were after Jewish, Gypsies, Homosexuals, disabled and even Jehovah’s Witnesses. Coming out to over 20 million dead in these horrifying time. Showing the German people that these were the reasons Germany had fallen and become weak, people were desperate for anything or anybody to rise to power again. With a weak economy and war respirations to many countries, they were desperate for someone to show that there is hope for them to get out of this depression and become peaceful and happy again. These people were terribly wrong. Nothing about Hitler was peaceful. Only thing he wanted was to have one of the biggest genocides in the history of the world. This genocide would be known forever as The Holocaust and later as Hitler’s Final Solution. On his rage to warpath, he was seen by others as unstoppable and powerful but, all the other countries did
According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, the Roma (Gypsies) and African-Germans were attacked because of their ethnicity. These two groups fell into the category of being “asocial” and too undesirable. The gypsies had pre-existing prejudices against them before Hitler’s rise which he just expanded on by creating laws against them. They had their civil rights taken away. Many were deported or sent to forced labor camps, and murdered. In 1933, the "Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Defects," was put into effect which gave doctors and physicians the ability to take away the choice and ability for the Roma and others to reproduce. The Romani and Negroes were considered minorities with “alien blood” so they were no longer allowed to marry those of the Aryan race (“Sinti and Roma”). The Gypsies and African-Germans foreign appearance, and customs were viewed as a threat to the “superior” race. They were under extreme scrutiny and judgment by researchers and scientists. They were measured, tested and became part of experiments to p...
The Holocaust was the horrifying genocide of over six million Jews (including gypsies, homosexuals, and other groups) that took place during the years of World War II. When Nazi forces came to rule over Germany in 1933, Germans began to view themselves as a ‘‘superior race’’ while Jews were seen as an ‘‘alien threat’’.The anti-Semitic dictator Adolf Hitler, blamed all Jews for Germany’s poor condition after WWI so he decided to carry out his ‘‘final solution’’, which was his plan to annihilate all the Jews of Europe. Mass murder centers known as concentration camps were built for the detention of any race that was considered inferior, and for anyone who opposed to follow Hitler’s realm. Behind the fences of concentration camps were the inhuman
The Holocaust, also known as Shoah’, was a genocide in which approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Killings took place throughout Nazi Germany and German-occupied territories and resorted into terror to intimidate opponents. From 1941-1945, Jews were targeted in a genocide, one of the largest in history, and part of acts of oppression and the killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by Nazis. Non-Jewish victims of Nazi crimes include communists, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the mentally and physically disabled. A system of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territories were used to concentrate, confine, and kill Jews and other victims. The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. The German government passed laws to isolate Jews from society, The Nuremberg Laws, which were anti-Semitic laws that contributed to Hitler’s goal of a master race. A system of concentration camps was established starting in 1933 and ghettos following the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Hitler’s goals of Lebensraum and Racial Purity was the method of recovering land lost in World War II and making the Aryan race the master race. Hitler did this by attacking neighboring countries who obtained this land after the war, identifying the Aryan
Wegner, Gregory Paul "Holocaust." Encyclopedia.com. HighBeam Research, 01 Jan. 2003. n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2014. .
During World War II, six million Polish citizens in total were killed. Among these, three million were not Jewish. Between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish non-Jews were deported into forced labor (Jacobs). Of these, all 1.5 million were killed (Jacobs). All of these victims were not Jewish. Yet despite this, they suffered just as much. The Jews were not the only ones who suffered. Their Polish brethren did as