The Cause and Beginning of the Holocaust
As large portions of Europe were taken over by the Nazis, the Nazis started a new policy. In accordance to Hitler's beliefs, the Nazis decided that the Aryans (incorrectly used to mean Germanic people) were the "master race" of the world. The Nazis declared that non-Aryans, especially the Jews, were inferior. This racist belief would lead to the mass killings of millions of Jews and "non-Aryans". This deliberate slaughter was called the Holocaust. According to Wikipedia.org's article on "The Holocaust", the term 'holocaust' is from the "Greek word holokauston which means completely (holos) burnt (kaustos)". How did the Holocaust begin? Europe had been, for many generations, somewhat hostile to the Jews, mostly because they were not of the Christian faith. During and before the 1930's, Hitler had built a strong hate toward Jews; he was an anti-semite. In his published book, Mein Kampf, written before he rose to power, while he was imprisoned for treason, Hitler wrote that Jews were the cause of Europe's and Germany's failures, and refers to his idea as the "Jewish peril". The Jewish were relatively wealthy in history and were also rumored to have been spies against the Nazis, causing Hitler to blame the Jews for Germany's defeat in WW1 and all of its economic problems. Anti-semitic propaganda was spread throughout Nazi Germany making the Jewish people the scapegoat for all of Germany's troubles. Jews were even forced to hold ant-semitic posters, humiliating themselves in public. Legal Persecution Starting in 1933, as Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the Nazis enforced the persecution of Jews. Firstly, they forbade Jews from holding public office. In 1935, they enforced the Nuremberg Laws, which took away from the Jewish their German citizenship, their jobs, and also their property. To identify Jews in public, the Nazis forced them to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes. As a result, discrimination of Jews increased greatly. Kristallnacht This was a Nazi pogrom against German Jews and is known as the "Night of Broken Glass" or Kristallnacht (crystal night) in German. On November 8-9, 1938, Nazi Brownshirt forces (the SA) and German civilians murdered hundreds of Jews, destroyed thousands of Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. An American who witnessed Kristallnacht in the German city of Leipzig, wrote, "Jewish shop windows by the hundreds were systematically...smashed....The main streets of the city were a positive litter of shattered plate glass." Kristallnacht became a big step-up in the Nazi policy of Jewish persecution. Jewish Emigration After this extremely violent event, many Jews living in Germany evacuated to other countries, trying to avoid further persecution. However, there were still many Jews left in Germany and in the lands that Hitler took control of. To solve this "Jewish Problem", Hitler took a powerful action by forcing Jews into emigration. The Central Office for Jewish Emigration was established by the high-ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann; this office pressured and forced Jews to emigrate from Nazi Germany. The world map to the right shows the countries which accepted Jewish refugees. Since the number of Jewish refugees were increasing rapidly in countries that accepted the Jews, it created a problem. Even though the Nazis wanted to continue removing the Jews, these countries refused to accept any more of them. Thus, Hitler's first plan of solving "the Jewish problem" was unsuccessful and he had to think of another way. Jewish Ghettos Hitler put his second plan of solving the "Jewish problem" into action. He forced Jews living in all of his conquered countries into isolated cities in Poland. There were horrible, separated places in those cities called ghettos where Jews were caged in by wire and stone walls. The places were just unbearable that many people died of hunger and sickness, as the Nazis wished. It was miraculous that the Jews survived through the ordeal. They were strong. They not only worked out ways to get the necessities but also tried hard not to lose their own values and customs. They made everyday life as pleasant and normal as possible by creating plays and concerts at the theaters and offering lessons in secret places. Moreover, they did not forget to write about what they experienced in the ghettos. The "Final Solution" Hitler couldn't wait for Jews to slowly die of famine or illness, so he decided to make a plan called the "Final Solution." This plan included genocide: the killing of a whole nation or race. One of the reasons, Hitler was determined to destroy all the Jews, was because he believed that the non- Aryans (non- Germans) and others, such as: - gypsies - homosexuals - mentally ill people - disabled - Jehovah's Witnesses Nazis considered these people inferior to Aryans. He considered these groups to be subhuman. After Hitler, the Führer ('leader' in German), invaded Poland in 1939, he made it clear that he was determined to wipe out the entire group of Jews, by sending the SS units ( the security force of Hitler) to capture all the Jews, regardless of their gender or age, and took them to pits and simply shot the prisoners to death. Those not killed were taken to concentration camps. Concentration camps were all over Nazi Germany and the lands occupied by Germany. In the beginning, most camps were labor camps where prisoners worked seven days a week making items for the German military or for German companies.The conditions in the camps were horrible. All prisoners were given to eat were scraps of bread and peelings of potatoes. The people starved and became extremely weak; most of the people lost over 50 pounds the first month in the concentration camps. One of the survivors of the Holocaust said, from the Modern World History: Patterns of Interaction textbook, "Hunger was so intense that if a bit of soup was spilled over, prisoners would dig their spoons into the mud and stuff the mess in to their mouths! " Hitler's wish was finally granted in 1942. The Nazis found the way to kill as many Jews in a shorter amount of time. Their solution was the building of gas chambers by German companies. Hundreds of prisoners, including babies, young children, the elderly and the sick, had to undress, be shaved, and were told they had to be disinfected in the "showers". The gas chambers had fake shower heads which released poisonous gases, such as carbon monoxide or Zyklon B, which killed people within 20-30 minutes. Other camp prisoners cremated the corpses using ovens specifically built to burn thousands of bodies per day. |
1935 chart shows racial classifications under the Nuremberg Laws. The chart on the right is its English translation.
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The Holocaust in the News:
German car company 'used hair from Jews murdered at Auschwitz' The Trump Administration's Flirtation With Holocaust Denial Historian Deborah Lipstadt accuses Trump advisers of 'soft Holocaust denial' Locations of Nazi Concentration & Death Camps
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