From the beginning of recorded history, humans have always longed for the ability to be equal to one another, regardless of their race, beliefs, or any other difference that may cause one discriminate another person. The ideology of human rights enforces that very yearning for egalitarianism. Even though human rights have been widely accepted, there have been times in history when they were looked at with a closed eye. The Holocaust, which was the mass murder of six million Jewish people, as well as many disabled citizens of Germany, was one of these unfortunate times. Many position the Holocaust as one of the worst human rights violations to ever be documented. From 1933 to 1945, the Holocaust violated the human rights of Jewish people by Nazis forcing them to partake in false actions, massacring them as innocent people, and placing themselves above Jewish people. As known by many, everything happens because of a previous event. The idea of German supremacy and Jewish inferiority originated 14 years before the Holocaust officially begun (Britannica n.pag). However, it was not until 1925 when Mein Kampf was published, that those ideas were expressed in printed form and introduced to the public. The author of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, wrote it in such a way that led people to believe that eliminating abnormal people would make Germany stronger and revive German culture (Britannica n.pag). This made people follow Hitler’s lead and start campaigning for the Nazi party and the
The Holocaust was one of the worst and most horrific events that took place in world history, the largest attempted genocide ever. The Jewish Holocaust has to be one of the largest events that has ever violated human rights. The Holocaust began in 1933 with Adolf Hitler leading the anti-Jew campaign which ultimately led to the torture and murder of over six million Jews in Germany. Hitler’s campaign not only affected the Jews but others would be labeled as “undesirable” as well. Gypsies and homosexuals as well as political and religious opposition would also be eliminated. The Holocaust is taught as a mass genocide of the Jews, but more than five million others would undergo
Horror struck on January 30, 1933, when Germany assigned Adolf Hitler as their chancellor. Once Hitler had finally reached power he set out to complete one goal, create a Greater Germany free from the Jews (“The reasons for the Holocaust,” 2009). This tragedy is known today as, “The Holocaust,” that explains the terrors of our histories past. The face of the Holocaust, master of death, and leader of Germany; Adolf Hitler the most deceitful, powerful, well spoken, and intelligent person that acted as the key to this mass murder. According to a research study at the University of South Florida, nearly eleven million people were targeted and killed. This disaster is a genocide that was meant to ethnically cleanse Germany of the Jews. Although Jewish people were the main target they were not the only ones targeted; gypsies, African Americans, homosexuals, socialists, political enemies, communists, and the mentally disabled were killed (Simpson, 2012, p. 113). The word to describe this hatred for Jewish people is known as antisemitism. It was brought about when German philosophers denounced that “Jewish spirit is alien to Germandom” (“Antisemitism”) which states that a Jew is non-German. Many people notice the horrible things the Germans did, but most don’t truly understand why the Holocaust occurred. To truly understand the Holocaust, you must first know the Nazis motivations. Their motivations fell into two categories including cultural explanations that focused on ideology and
To Kill a Mockingbird is a witty and well-written account of the realities of a “tired old town” (4) where there was “nothing to buy and nothing to buy it with” (4). Purposefully, it comes across not merely an innocently portrayed, yet eye-opening, story of a young girl start to grasp the inequalities of her society. Rather, it is accompanied by recollection of the unfortunate pillars of hate of the places Harper Lee matured in. We now perceive this account as an ‘archaic” and “ancient” recount of some historically frowned upon mindsets in an enthralling atmosphere upon which we pin historical quantities of prejudice, racism and most of all, bigotry. The unfortunate reality is that we look at history in a vacuum and ignore the occurrences of our own times. So although we, like Scout’s teachers teaching about the horrible acts of the Holocaust while being outspokenly racist, are able to analyze social inequalities in other places in time or the world yet refuse to open our eyes to the same prejudice, racism and bigotry today. To instance, when reading To Kill a Mockingbird , we often frown upon citizens for judging “folks” based on their family name and race, although, everyday, some member of our current society, such as police officers and employers, do the same thing and no one bats an eye. Alternatively, the issue which we definitely desperately desire to avoid, racism, is explicitly tackled in To Kill a Mockingbird to the point of viral awareness of the problem in
From 1941 to 1945, Jews were systematically murdered in one of the deadliest genocides in history, which was part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppression and killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazi regime. Every arm of Germany 's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics and the carrying out of the genocide. Other victims of Nazi crimes included Romanians, Ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah 's Witnesses and the mentally and physically disabled. A network of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territories were used to concentrate victims for slave labor, mass murder, and other human rights abuses. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators. Beginning in 1941, Jews from all over the continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of European Gypsies, were transported to the Polish ghettoes. Every person designated as a Jew in German territory was marked with a yellow star making them open targets. Thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the USSR. Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz and many more. That August, 500 officials gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with the pesticide Zyklon-B. The SS soon placed a huge order for the gas with a German pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the coming Holocaust. Beginning in late 1941, the Germans
The Holocaust was the systematic killing and extermination of millions of Jews and other Europeans by the German Nazi state between 1939 and 1945. Innocent Europeans were forced from their homes into concentration camps, executed violently, and used for medical experiments. The Nazis believed their acts against this innocent society were justified when hate was the motivating factor. The Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on a society. It forces societies to examine the responsibility and role of citizenship, in addition to approaching the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction. (Holden Congressional Record). Despite the adverse treatment of the Jews, there are lessons that can be learned from the Holocaust: The Nazi’s rise to power could have been prevented, the act of genocide was influenced by hate, and the remembrance of the Holocaust is of the utmost importance for humanity.
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.
There are several various causes of the Holocaust event, the most common being the adamant hatred of Jewish people in the immediate community. Anti-Semitic views had already been widespread in Europe, even before Hitler’s time. It was believed that the Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Hitler had tried his hand at becoming a professional artist in Austria, but was struggling heavily. When he would see the Jewish people around living and doing better in life, his hatred grew--presumably out of jealousy. Germany’s defeat in World War I only made it worse. He, and other German soldiers, had blamed Jewish people even further for their loss. In the war only about one hundred-thousand Jews went to war, and only twelve-thousand were lost.
It mostly started when Hitler gained complete control over Germany. He began passing his dehumanizing laws, that stripped them of all their freedoms. Hitler had remarkable public speaking skills and was able to inspire mainly the youth of Germany to support his sinister plans. After he had the support of Germany he began to transport, or relocate, the Jews of Europe to various camps, known as concentration camps, death camps, and slave labor camps. In these camps they stripped these people of their identity, work these people until they are near death, and then killed them, by burning them alive. After many long years in these torturous they were finally liberated by the allied forces, being America and Russia. Sara E. Karesh stated that the Holocaust was unique event in which Hitler and his men were able to dehumanize over six million people and then kill them and that it was modern technology that was the key element that allowed this sort of thing to happen (Karesh, “Holocaust” 2). The fact that Hitler was able to carry his plan out and almost succeed in annihilating all other the Jews in Europe, shows that society is still not able to comprehend that all humans are equal.
The human tragedy of the Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime during World War II. The adversity of this persecution influenced not only the European arena, but also peoples from all over the globe and their ideas.
For the past 300 years, the world’s society has displayed lots of unbelievable human cruelty. For example, slavery in the 18th and 19th century, African Americans were forced into harsh work labor because of their skin color. Then in the 20th century, a determined dictator, Adolf Hitler, murdered and tortured eleven million lives. This horrifying event was called the Holocaust, it occurred in 1933 but ended in 1945. Adolf Hitler was angered about the result of World War 1, so he blamed Jewish people, the disabled, and other groups. During the holocaust, the eleven million lives were forced into harsh work labors or was put into gas chambers and was killed instantly. People described the Holocaust as inhumane act, and the people that survived it, could really say it was a scarring memory.
Human rights were an achievement that we humans have been working for years. Therefore it came to effect for at least some of us around the world in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is a declaration of 30 human rights that the United Nation adopted in December 10 of 1948. However, we face challenges along the way that oppose this belief of human rights. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, a novel called Night which is about a man’s experience of the Holocaust (written by Elie Wiesel who actually experienced the event) provide events that violated the human rights of two, three, and five.
While fighting for freedom a lot of important lives were lost trying to stand up for their own beliefs and rights. The Holocaust was a Jewish massacre including the lives of six million Jews. On the other hand, The Civil War was America's central event that took the lives of 625,000 people in-exchange for freedom. Both of them included acts of injustice and violence, beliefs of inequality, hatred, and societal changes. These events caused disparity in the society in which live on today.
The experience of the Second World War, typically the the abominations inflicted onto the Jews by nazi Germany during the holocaust, as well as many other events that tested the dignity of many individuals who were caught in the strife of war. Yet the presence of enormity lasted throughout the aftermath of the war, and it became apparent that some action should be taken into consideration and fully executed, to prevent the cruelty that people undergone and the violation to dignity and worth of a human being. during the Second World War, the Allies adopted four fundamental rights as their basic war aims, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, freedom from want. The authority of the UN reaffirmed faith in these fundamental
The Holocaust is most well-known for the organized and inhumane extermination of more than six million Jews. The death total of the Jews is this most staggering; however, other groups such as Gypsies, Poles, Russians, political groups, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals were targeted as well (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Introduction to the Holocaust). The initial idea of persecuting select groups of people began with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. In January 1930, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany after winning over its people with powerful and moving speeches. From this point forward, it was a goal for both Hitler and his Nazi Party to rid the world of deemed “inferior” groups of people (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Timeline
Having human rights in place imposes certain obligations on the government and justifies the complaints of those whose rights and freedoms have not been respected. Everyone is entitled to human rights regardless of their nationality, gender, race, religion, or political opinion. The failure to recognize these rights results in conflict and a vicious cycle of violence as more human rights are violated. To avoid such clashes, human rights have become a fundamental part of global law and policy. However, they have not always been that way. Catastrophic events in history that claimed thousands of lives ran their vicious course before it was recognized that there had to be human rights established. The most famous example of genocide is the Holocaust, which killed around six million Jews. After the Holocaust, the United Nations recognized that there had to be human rights put into place. Two human rights from the United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” that were perversely violated during the Holocaust are Article 5 (the protection against inhumane treatment or punishment) and Article 25 (the right to a standard of living.) Light is shed upon the exploitation of human rights during the Holocaust in both Night by Elie Wiesel and The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal. The Holocaust was a devastating event that opened our eyes to just how cruel humans can be, and why human rights must be enforced and protected.