Genocide of the Jewish Race: An Unthinkable Act
Genocide. What is it defined as? According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, genocide is defined as any crime committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, or religious group. The Holocaust, during WWII, is one of the largest acts of genocide in human history resulting in an unfathomable amount of deaths of the Jewish race(Holocaust Encyclopedia). According to the Holocaust Museum Houston, over 5,800,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Communists, trade unionists, socialists, and gypsies are just some of the many groups also affected by this horrific event(Holocaust Museum Houston). Many unanswered questions still remain today about the Holocaust. Perhaps
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According to the Mail Online Website, it became fashionable to decry the loss of WWI on Jewish financers. Hitler also believed that the Russian revolution was a result of the Jews. His detestation intensified simply because these innocent people were Jewish (Mail Online). Hate was the fuel to his fire.
According to Mail Online, Hitler’s animosity was very strong. “Hitler and the Nazis believed that the Jews were biologically and racially distinct”. They thought that every person that was a Jew was not a real human and they had no right to live. Once Hitler rose into control, he used his power to campaign against all Jewish people. Nazis made all German people stop shopping in Jewish shops because a Jew was thought to be a “sub-human”. (Mail Online) This was all a part of Hitler’s plan for their downfall. The presence of racism was growing so strong to the point that children were being taught anti-Semitic ideas. In 1935, a group of laws called the Nuremberg Laws were passed and all German citizens, that were Jewish, lost all freedom, independence, and even citizenship. The prejudice increased so vastly that a chemist would not sell medicine to a Jew, even if it would save their life.
According to Main Online, “It was the explicit aim of Hitler’s regime to create an “Aryan” race”. Hitler’s goal was to get rid of anyone who went against his beliefs or ideas. He also wanted to dispose of anyone who was not to his “Aryan” standards genetically of
Finally, many purely hated Jews because they were not Aryan. Germany was one of these countries. Hitler, the leader of Germany, has carried hate for the Jews since early childhood. Primarily, he blamed them for his mother’s death along with him not getting into his dream school, Vienna Art College. Also, they were blamed by Germany for defeat in WWI and as the cause for unemployment. However, mainly Jews were persecuted because of the way they looked. At the time, Hitler wanted a racially pure Germany. He believed that by adapting the Darwin theory of survival of the fittest, he would be able to create a stronger generation and kill those that are impure or disabled.
To start, when Hitler came into power, everyone loved him and he was like any average ruler until things started to change. Hitler led Germany into battle in World War II and mostly everyone was convinced that it was only a matter of time before they won the battle, but when this was not the case Hitler was outraged. From the article in historylearningsite.co.uk it illustrates what Hitler felt, ““stabbed in the back” by the Jews” (Trueman). This was most likely the result of feeling like he needed someone to put the blame on, someone to be displeased at. The Jews didn’t purposely make Germany surrender or have any part of having Germany lose the war, after all it was their country too. After this event, things started to go down hill for the Jews and what most people refer to as mankind's worst mistake. Secondly, Hitler started to use his power to exterminate or control the population of all Jews, thus abusing it and doing things that should not be done with his power. Since he thought Jews took everything away from him and Germany he started dehumanizing them and treated them as if worse than animals. The novel Night states that they were deprived of all of their jewels and precious belongings, having to wear a yellow star so everyone knew they were Jewish, living in the ghettos,
Hitler had shown unwillingness to tolerate the Jews and once he was appointed Chancellor, he started to take elimination measures like deportation, forced emigration, and isolation to enforce his belief. He took advantage of Germany’s weakness in World War One, then used it as an opportunity to blame the Jews for Germany’s defeat. Hitler’s political party was the largest political party in Germany thus allowing them to draw very large crowds to gatherings. He had very good oratory speeches with hand gestures that easily manipulated people to adhere to his views. Hitler constantly targeted the Jews because he knew people believed in these speeches. People in Germany were already anti-semitic but Hitler made it worse by constantly consuming them in his speeches. From the way he spoke about the Jews, we could clearly see the possibility of genocide. Hitler wanted Germany to be free of any humans that anyone other than his ideal master race so he personally selected bodyguards to be part of a group called the SS. Hitler was responsible for ordering the SS to carry out the extermination of anyone who did not fit this ideal. The SS handled oppositions using force and as a result of which people were forced to give into the idea of violence. Sometimes people purposely went along with this Holocaust ideal due to the fear of getting killed. These terrors allowed the holocaust occur
Accordingly, Hitler began eradicating all nationalities that he considered second-rate to Germans. Many believe that the depopulation technique was the “German viewpoint of the Nazi government, which wanted to create a "master race" of Aryan people. After January 1933, the Jews were placed in concentration camps which started the Holocaust” (Katz, 1994).
The Holocaust was a mass murder of millions of individuals’ primary to and during World War II. “Only 54 percent of the people surveyed by the Anti- Defamation League (ADL) in a massive, global poll has ever heard of the Holocaust” (Wiener-Bronner). The Holocaust was from 1933-1945 and was run by German leader named Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a man who wanted to create his own race of people. Therefore to create this race, he wiped out anyone who did not have the specific descriptions that he wanted. For people to fit into his race, they had to have blue eyes and blond hair. This excluded the Jews and from then on Hitler slowly dehumanized them. In the concentration camp the first thing they had to pass was the selection test. The selection test was what the SS man (German soldiers) used to determine who was fit for work. Usually children, mothers, and elders were the first to die because they were not mentally fit for the work they were going to be given. People who passed the selection process either died of starvation, disease, fatigue, or assassination. It took twelve years before anyone intervened and by then it was too late for millions of people. Even though over twelve million people died during the Holocaust, genocides have still happened in Rwanda, Darfur and Cambodia.
Hitler’s hatred of the Jewish race stems from the German defeat in the first World War. He blames them for a “stab in the back” even though 100,000 Jews had served from Germany and Austria and 12,000 were killed. Right after he and his family moved to the city of Czestochowa, the German military came in and put placards up that ordered all Jewish males between the ages of 15 to 80 to report
By blaming the Jews for the economic crisis that Germany was suffering through as well as their defeat in WW1, Hitler targeted the Jews as the country’s main enemy. According to him, the Jewish were directly responsible for Germany’s problems. Hitler hated the Jews leading up to the Holocaust because he believed that the Jewish financiers were responsible for sending the world into its first World War, causing the deaths over 100,000 Germans. According to the Nazis the “Aryan race” was the best and strongest race. Jews were of another inferior race. In fact so inferior that they were not considered to be “people” by the
At the end of WWI in 1918, Germany’s economy was in ruins. There were very few jobs, and bitterness began to take over the country. According to the text, “Hitler, a rising politician, offered Germany a scapegoat: Jewish people. Hitler said that Jewish people were to blame for Germany’s problems. He believed that Jews did not deserve to live.” (7) This was the birth of Antisemitism--prejudice against Jewish people. Europe’s Jewish people have always been persecuted due to their “different customs and beliefs that many viewed with suspicion.”(7) Hitler simply reignited the flames, and a violent hatred was born.
The view Adolf Hitler had on the Jewish peoples was that everything was their faults and he hated them. Before Hitler became a Dictator he was a soldier just like everyone else in World War 1 and when the German Empire lost he was in disbelief and just couldn’t believe it. Many nationalist and conservatives believed that Germany had not lost the war on the battlefield but due to betrayal from within, by a ‘stab in the back’. Socialists, communists and particularly Jews were blamed, even though more than 100,000 German and Austrian Jews had served in the war and 12,000 had been killed.
Hitler hatred towards the Jews truly began when he came to Vienna. While in Vienna, Hitler read various publications that molded his ideals in regards to the Jews and later policy making when he becomes chancellor. I would like to point out that the author should of took the time to include specific examples of the materials that Hitler read; although, it is fine since we discuss and learned about it in class. Hitler’s first recorded comment against the Jews occurred while in the military. A soldier asked why did Germany lose the war and a commander requested Hitler to reply to the question (Hilberg 5). Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat .
Hitler was obsessed with the racial superiority he believed the German peoples had over all other inferior peoples. He wanted to rule the world, but in order to carry out his solution, he needed to convince the German people to listen to him. Perhaps Hitler would never have been able to do what he did had World War I never occurred. As Resnick said in his book, The Holocaust; After World War I, Germany was trying to rebuild and recover…Both the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression severely afflicted Germany. "In many respects, these terrible conditions made Hitler's rise to power possible." (Resnick p. 15) People in desperate situations will listen to anyone offering a way out. Hitler offered not only a way out of Germany's turmoil, but also someone to blame for it; he pointed at the Jews.
Hitler believed Germans were racially superior and deemed Jews and other ‘undesirables’ a threat and ‘impurity’ to the community. In 1933, before Nazi Germany came into
Hitler was only showing anti-semitic feelings that had been in Europe for decades. Hitler and his ideals made it easy for the German people to the blame a particular group for the economic difficulties of Europe after the first World War . Hitle rmade many believe that Jews had been the reason of defeat during the war and economic depression . Hitler wanted racial purity. He thought , German, or "Aryan," blood must be kept vital and strong.
Hitler had resentment for jewish people for the problems that faced Germany. The economic depression had hit Germany extremely hard, families were broken apart and millions of people were losing their jobs, many people lost confidence in the democratic system and placed their reliance within political parties. When Germany lost in World War 1 in 1914 fifteen years earlier Germany was starting to lose faith in their government (Weimar Republic). With these circumstances it had given the perfect provision for Adolf Hitler And his nazi party to become leader. Hitler had a strong voice that people listened to and admired, with hitler's motivational speaking he attracted a large audience of Germans desperate to their knees for change. Hitler
Hitler’s believed in the Nationalism philosophy that was prevalent in Germany, which states that Germans were the supreme race and all Jews were a primary cause of Germany losing World War I and should be punished. Another primary reason that reinforced Hitler’s Anti-Semitism were Germany’s economic woes after the war and the Jews relative prosperity and lack of