The Little Known Victims of the Holocaust
Many people look back on the Holocaust today and realize that so many abysmal and hideous things happened. The genocide of the Jews is known but what may be less well documented is Hitler’s design to eradicate all groups other than the blue-eyed, fair-haired Aryans. So many of them were forgotten and just pushed in with the major race of the Jews, who were said to be unworthy of life. The people were not ready, nor expecting to be forced into such an egregious state of being. Adolf Hitler excruciatingly persecuted every race that he thought was unsuitable for his dream of a Master Race.
On September 1, 1939, Hitler began the start of World War II. He decided that he wanted to build what he called a Master Race. With that decision, he made up a legal document to exterminate whomever he thought was not suitable for his Master Race. The only suitable ones were the white people with blue eyes and blonde hair, otherwise known as the Aryans. Hitler had all the full-blood Germans under his command and he promised to have them all together in unison to regain peace. He had all of the educated people teach that their race was superior to others (Friedman 2).
Hitler, to keep his promise to the Germans, created the Nazi party to maintain order and to wipe out the unwanted. To go along with Hitler, the Nazis promoted Anti-Semitism. There were many laws that forbade harsh treatment to the human race but those laws did not mean anything to the Nazis; they broke every law and even beyond. Creating an ideal race began with having only Aryans present on Earth. Hitler’s desire was to have only people of Aryan descent, being somehow part of a past Iranian civilization from Europe. Even if they were ...
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...dreadful man. Having an idea to exterminate everyone except himself and full blood Germans was an outrageous thing to try to do. He managed to kill countless people, but thankfully someone realized that something needed to be done to stop him and his awful endeavors. The Holocaust left Hitler’s hideous stamp on history and needs to be remembered so it will never be repeated.
Works Cited
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Berenbaum, Michael and Abraham J. Peck, eds. The Holocaust and History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002 Print.
Friedman, Ina R. The Other Victims. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990. Print.
Gottfried, Ted. Martyrs to Madness: The Victims of the Holocaust. Brookfield, CT: Twenty First Century Book, 2000. Print.
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In the Summer of 1941, Adolf Hitler started exterminating Jews and other non-Aryans, as a part of his plan to create a perfect Germany and to carry out his ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’. Before exterminating 6,000,000 Jewish people, Adolf Hitler had already performed several actions which singled out the Jew as an evil person and one who should be killed. In 1923, Hitler was caught while trying to overturn the Bavarian government and was imprisoned for 5 years. In prison, he wrote the famed autobiography, Mein Kampf, in which he stated his first publicly known anti-Semitic beliefs and his ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’. While imprisoned, there was a worldwide depression as economic markets crashed worldwide. This would help Hitler because once out of prison he would use this to help gain power both for the Nazi’s and for himself politically by promising better things to come in the future. In 1933, while preaching in front of a large Nazi crowd, Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats for Germany’s loss in World War One. “If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.'; Many people were upset at the loss, and blaming the Jews made many people anti-Semites. Once he was named chancellor in 1933, Hitler preached about creating a Germany for true German people and a more centralized Germany. This included eliminating those who were non-Aryans and/or non-German. He would later detail about what a true German was in the Nuremberg Laws. He stated that Jews were not really Germans but instead, they were non-Aryan, and they were malignant tumors.
Botwinick, Rita Steinhardt. A History of the Holocaust. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.
Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Gottfried, Ted. Deniers of the Holocaust: who they are, what they do, and why they do it. Brookfield , Connecticut : Twenty-First Century Books, 2001. Print.
This society, in which Germans would be the conquerors of the world and the leader of every aspect of society, would be a society in which only German Aryans thrived, Hitler told the masses (Noakes). It was essential in order to have a society that was not tainted, to efface those who could poison this wonderful utopia, and thus crush the German dream. The Jews and other inferior races, Hitler told the population, were the ca...
But Hitler made it his goal to kill this imperfect race. “Born in Austria,Hitler served in the German army during World War One.” ( The Holocaust) To him the Jews were an inferior race the needed to be eliminated. He thought that by using anti-semitism he would become more popular with the crowd.
Levi, Neil, and Michael Rothberg. The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Print.
Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. Van Pelt. Holocaust: a History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
Beginning in 1933, Hitler and his Nazi party targeted not only those of the Jewish religion but many other sets. Hitler was motivated by religion and nationalism to eradicate any threats to his state. It was Hitler’s ideology that his Aryan race was superior to any other. Hitler’s goal was to create a “master race” by eliminating the chance for “inferiors” to reproduce. Besides the Jews the other victims of the genocide include the Roma (Gypsies), African-Germans, the mentally disabled, handicapped, Poles, Slavs, Anti-Nazi political parties, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Homosexuals. In Hitler’s eyes all of these groups needed to be eliminated in order for his master race to be a success.
Hitler had thought that the Jews did not believe in the “right” thing so he tried to eliminate the race. He did not want them to believe in what they did and still do. He thought that the Jewish race was inferior and did not mean anything. The way that Hitler treated the Jews were crimes against humanity and I know that many non Jews saw that but did...
Bard, Mitchell G., ed. "Introduction." Introduction. The Holocaust. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2001.
Regine Donner, a famous Holocaust survivor, once said, “I had to keep my Jewishness hidden, secret, and never to be revealed on penalty of death. I missed out on my childhood and the best of my adolescent years. I was robbed of my name, my religion, and my Zionist idealism” (“Hidden Children”). Jewish children went through a lot throughout the Holocaust- physically, mentally, and emotionally. Life was frightening and difficult for children who were in hiding during the rule of Adolf Hitler.
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.
Hitler believes that human race can be divided into three categories- founders, maintainers and destroyers of culture. He firmly believes that the Aryan race compose the first category.