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Effect of the Holocaust
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When people think of the Holocaust, they often times think of the bad images they have seen, and the many deaths associated with this tragic event. In some cases, many people around the world do not believe that the Holocaust occurred. Unfortunately, the Holocaust was an inhuman event that did happen in World War II, initiated by Adolf Hitler. Many people seem to think that only the Jews were discriminated against, but there were many more races effected by Nazi Germany. Everyone persecuted in the Holocaust were what we call today, “othered”. Meaning that they were set out from other people, in terrible living conditions, for any reason, and not allowed in the norms of regular life. Which made them face hardships that they have never imagined.
This event took place in 1938. “Nearly 1,000 synagogues were set on fire, and 76 were destroyed. More than 7,000 Jewish businesses, and homes were looted, about one hundred Jews were killed, and as many as 30,000 Jews were arrested, and sent to concentration camps to be tormented, many for months.” (Technology). The Nazi’s furthered their persecution against the Jews by forcing them to pay for the damages of “The Night of Broken Glass”. Making this event the beginning of the persecution the Jews would be facing.
Then, on September 1st, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France, had obliged by treaty to help Poland, declaring war on Germany. Now World War II had begun, and the harsh persecution of the Jews were being implemented into the war plans. Not only did Hitler have plans to demolish the race of the Jews, but also other competing countries he was fighting against. “Therefore, Hitler sent more than just his army into the Soviet Union; he sent mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen. These squads were to search out, and kill Jews, and other “undesirables” en masse.”
All the concentration camps in Europe were liberated by Americans, and many of the Jews who were still alive were transported to displaced person facilities. The prisoners left in the concentration camps were barely staying alive. Many of these prisoners, were dying from starvation, and disease. “Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching Majdanek near Lublin, Poland, in July 1944. Surprised by the rapid Soviet advance, the Germans attempted to hide the evidence of mass murder by demolishing the camp. Camp staff set fire to the large crematorium used to burn bodies of murdered prisoners, but in the hasty evacuation the gas chambers were left standing.” (Museum). Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied, and shown to the public. Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the world. This was when many people actually started to believe what had happened in Germany. The small percentage of inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands of forced labor and the lack of food, compounded by months and years of maltreatment. Many were so weak that they could hardly move. Disease remained an ever-present danger, and many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics. Survivors of the
In this paper, we will explore the camp that is Bergen-Belsen and its workers, the camp system, liberation and trial. The notorious detention camp, Bergen-Belsen, was constructed in 1940 and “was near Hanover in northwest Germany, located between the villages Bergen and Belsen” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org), hence the name. Originally, the “camp was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org) but, Bergen-Belsen rapidly grew. “In the first eighteen months of existence, there were already five satellite camps.” (holocaustresearchproject.org).
“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” said by the enlightened Dalai Lama. The Jews, innocent and sympathetic, were treated like trash during Kristallnacht. The Night of Broken Glass was one of the most terrifying and brutal nights of German history, in addition Kristallnacht was an excuse for the Nazi party to eradicate the Jews and other minor ethnic groups. The Secret Police and the Waffen SS could determine if people were Jewish or not if they had certain attributes such as having blonde hair, having light blue eyes, and having a rectangular shaped forehead. Over hundreds were injured and a copious amount had died during Kristallnacht, in addition Jews were not only affected in Germany but also in “territories forcibly seized by Germany, Austria and Sudentland” (Kristallnacht: Overview). Kristallnacht, a doomsday for Jews, inducing in destruction of Jewish property, death of Jews, and social isolation.
Nearly all of the deportees who were sent to the centers were instantaneously guided to the gas chambers to die, except for a select few who were chosen to be sonderkommandos. Over two million Jews were murdered inside killing centers either by smothering with poison gas or by shooting with guns (Killing Centers ). The gas-van was a product of the Third Reich; it consisted of a van with a gas-tight cabin attached on its understructure used to kill victims by the motor-exhausts led into that cabin (The Development of the Gas-Van in the Murdering of the Jews). The Germans executed over 150,000 people at Chelmno between December 1941 and March 1943 and then again in June and July 1944 by means of gassing vans (Killing Centers ). The Germans also found the use of gas chambers to be more effective and usually killed thousands of people daily. Within minutes of being inside a gas chamber, pris...
While being forced to live in Auschwitz they endured many cruel and harsh punishments. The main form of punishment was the gas chambers. These chambers were cells that were made underground and were able to be sealed. Zyklon-B was the poison used to gas and kill the Jewish people. “It takes about 10 minutes to kill 2,000 to 3,000 people in the gas chamber.” (Saldinger p.57) After gassing they would then be extracted from the chamber and taken to the crematorium where the bodies would be disposed of. Sometimes it wasn’t even the guards who would dispose of the bodies, most of the time it was the prisoners who were forced to extract their own people from the chambers. This was just one of the many forms of punishment; there were many more and some were just as bad.
The expropriation of the Jewish people began with the confiscation of the Jewish wealth, the removal of Jewish property, the registration of all assert, and the inability of Jews to own home property. After the Jew was sent off people moved into their homes and took over their business. Between 1933 and 1939, 80% of the Jewish properties were seized, 50% of Jewish businesses were closed and 50% of Jews was displaced. By the time the war began in September 1939 they were not many Jew...
Kristallnacht, a wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms, took place on November 9 and 10, 1938 and is often referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass." Organized by Goebbels and Heydrich, head of the Security Service, the campaign of violence resulted in the destruction of many synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses. Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, killed close to 100 Jews, and sent more than 30,000 to Nazi concentration camps. Starting on November 9 and continuing into the next day, Nazi mobs vandalized and even burned down hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany and damaged, if not completely destroyed, thousands of Jewish homes, schools, businesses, hospitals and cemeteries.
The Holocaust was a bloody, terrifying event that unfortunately happened during the world’s most bloody war, World War II. The end result of a portion of deaths of the Holocaust resulted in astounding number of about 6,000,000 Jewish people dead. However, there were about 13,684,900 other lives that were taken during this “cleansing period” that Adolf Hitler once said. Those lives included civilians in surrounding countries, resisters against the Nazi nation, opposing religious members, and many more. Although, over 6,000,000 Jewish people died, many others died who are just as memorable.
The inmates usually lived in overcrowded barracks and slept in bunk “beds”. In the forced labour camps, for instance, the inmates usually worked 12 hours a day with hard physical work, clothed in rags, eating too little and always living under the risk of corporal punishment” (Holocaust | Concentration Camps). Only 7,000 emaciated survivors of a Nazi extermination process that killed an estimated six million Jews were found at Auschwitz” (Rice, Earle). Most of these deaths occurred towards the end of the war; however, there were still a lot of lives that had been miraculously spared. “According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners left in the camps in January 1945.
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.
Prejudice is the attitude of conveying negative stereotypes to a particular group, usually known as the out-groups. Usually the stereotypes are generalizations based on superficial opinions, so they have an invalid connotation behind it. Stereotypes in some cases evoke prejudice mindsets, leading to discriminate a certain ethnic group, age group, religion, seuxal orienntation, or body size. Stereotypes are usually socially learned from one’s environment and latched onto the mind of a young child. This could possibly later influence their opinion about something they are not fully educated on. One cannot control what they are taught, but one can control what they do with that information. They can either not believe a word of it or take it into
They were deported on packed trains. Many people died on the trains from hunger, disease, thirst, and suffocation. The Jews could be on the trains for months at a time. Soon after Germany separated from Austria in March 1938, the Nazi soldiers arrested and imprisoned Jews in concentration camps all over Germany. Only eight months after annexation, the violent anti-jew Kristallnacht, also known as Night of the Broken Glass, pogroms took place.
The Holocaust was a terrible time for people who were a different race, or if you were Jewish. It started in Germany in 1933 by a man named Adolf Hitler when he came into rule, but ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by allied powers of the Britain and America. The term holocaust can be translated into Hebrew and it means devastation or ruin. The Holocaust was a mass murder of about six million Jews during World War II, a systematic state sponsored murder for Adolf Hitler and the rest of the Nazis and they invaded German-occupied territories. Out of all nine million of the Jews who chose to live in Europe, about two-thirds were killed in the Holocaust. One million children, two million women and three million men were killed that were Jewish. There was a network of over 40,000 facilities in Germany and Germany-occupied territories were used to hold and kill Jews and other victims. Some scholars today argue that the murder of disabled people and the Romani should be included, and some use the common noun ‘holocaust’ to describe other Nazi murders including Soviet prisoner of war. The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages, like making laws. Various laws, like the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, were to exclude Jews from the civil society and enacted in Germany before the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Concentration camps were established in which inmates would work in slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. Whenever Germany conquered new territory in Eastern Europe, the Nazis murdered more than a million political opponents and Jews in mass shootings. Most of the Jews or Romanis that were found in overcrowded ghettoes were transported by freight trains to extermination camps and if they survived the j...
The Holocaust was the genocide of approximately six million people of innocent Jewish decent by the Nazi government. The Holocaust was a very tragic time in history due to the idealism that people were taken from their surroundings, persecuted and murdered due to the belief that German Nazi’s were superior to Jews. During the Holocaust, many people suffered both physically and mentally. Tragic events in people’s lives cause a change in their outlook on the world and their future. Due to the tragic events that had taken place being deceased in their lives, survivors often felt that death was a better option than freedom.
“ Hitler used propaganda and manufacturing enemies such as Jews and five million other people to prepare the country for war.” (Jewish Virtual Library), This piece of evidence shows Hitler’s attempt of genocide toward the Jewish race a...
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Germany was experiencing great economic and social hardship. Germany was defeated in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles forced giant reparations upon the country. As a result of these reparations, Germany suffered terrible inflation and mass unemployment. Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party who blamed Jews for Germany’s problems. His incredible public speaking skills, widespread propaganda, and the need to blame someone for Germany’s loss led to Hitler’s great popularity among the German people and the spread of anti-Semitism like wildfire. Hitler initially had a plan to force the Jews out of Germany, but this attempt quickly turned into the biggest genocide in history. The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933.“...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” –Adolf Hitler