Many groups of people were persecuted during the events of World War II. Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals were some of the many victims of cruel and unfair oppression. With no intentions to heil to the Nazis and their ruler, these groups, including numerous others, were imprisoned in concentration camps and punished for their religions, beliefs, and ways of life. Some fell victim to merciless Nazi persecution, while others were murdered almost instantaneously. Many died as prisoners of harsh concentration camps. Upon entering these camps, captives were stripped of their identity and forced into a life of brutal confinement. Jews and gypsies were the main targets of Nazi oppression, but other groups, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals, still died in concentration camps from sicknesses and abusive treatment. Almost six million Jews and over 220,000 gypsies were murdered in gas chambers and furnaces, as well as from extreme fatigue, malnourishment, and illnesses. Nazis believed that Jews were the cause of all of Germany’s problems and, therefore, should be eradicated. Gypsies were seen as outcasts, with no place to fit in. Hitler ordered them to be exiled for having their own vernaculars and traditions. Homosexuals, primarily men, were also persecuted for their ways of life. Around 15,000 homosexuals were imprisoned in camps, and an estimated 10,000 were murdered. Unfortunately, Nazis were not the only ones guilty of killing homosexuals; fellow inmates of
The Nazis would claim they where being sent to another location for work. Most women and children where separated from their husbands and fathers and sent to death camps to be killed. The common misconception is that there was only concentration camps, There were actually a number of different kinds of camps people where sent to , including concentration camps, extermination camps, labor camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and transit camps. Life within Nazi camps was horrible. Prisoners were forced to do hard physical labor and yet given tiny rations. Prisoners slept three or more people per crowded wooden bunk Torture within the concentration camps was common and deaths were frequent. One of the more common types of torture in the camps where medical. German doctors often used prisoners in medical experiments. These tortures experiments included freezing the victims, amputations of live victims limbs, placing live victims in pressure chambers, drug testing them and poisoning them, also used malaria and mustard gas. Adolf Hitler was obsessed with exterminating anything he didn’t consider to be part of his perfect Aryan race. One of Hitler’s Leading Nazi Officers Heinrich Himmler stated “Europe is a gigantic barnyard, and just as farmers bred and improved animals for a specific purpose, the Nazi State should do the same with humans”. Any group that didn’t conform to the Nazis where eliminated. Once Hitler had started his perfect race abortion was
Well, Jehovah’s Witnesses believed that Jesus is God’s only direct creation, and that everything else was created by means of Christ. Every European Country, had people who didn’t believe in Nazi ideology. Hitler didn’t like this group of Christians because they refused to recognized any other god other than Jehovah. They were forced to wear purple wristbands and thousands were imprisoned as traitors. Who were the Roma Gypsies? Well, like the Jews, Roma Gypsies were selected for complete destruction because of their race. The Roma Gypsies were a nomadic people that were prosecuted throughout history. 500,000 Roma Gypsies were destroyed during the Holocaust. What happened to Homosexuals during the Holocaust? Homosexuals were prosecuted, tortured, and executed. Hitler even searched Nazis and he found homosexuals and he sent them to concentration camps. Homosexual Inmates were forced to wear pink triangles, so they could be humiliated inside the camp. 15,000 homosexuals died during the Holocaust. What happened to the disabled? Well, Hitler decided that it was a waste of time to support the disabled, so he sentenced them to death. Let me conclude by recapping my points. I began by telling you how different types of people died during the Holocaust. Then, we looked into what happened to some of the Non-Jewish Victims during the Holocaust. So, everyone remember that the Holocaust was a violent and deadly time
What happened to the Jews during the Holocaust was unthinkable; millions of people were persecuted. Jews were asked to vacate their homes and were shifted to specific areas in cities known as ghettos. In these ghettos, several families had to live under one roof in cramped and unhealthy manner. About 6 million Jews were sent to concentration camps. Jews were transported in freight trains to these camps under inhumane conditions, and many perished on the way. They were hardly given any food. They were also made to work long hours, some times 12 to 14 hours without a break. The Nazis did not spare women or children. According to estimates, the Nazis killed 1.2 millions Jewish children and thousands of gypsy and disabled
It is amazing to hear from the people who have actually survived the Holocaust. It shows us how much we still have to learn about the world and the civilizations and how hard it is to understand the reason why we do such things to our fellow human beings. "By 1945, two out of every three European Jews had been killed and the survivors continued to be oppressed." (Telles 51) In addition, thousands of political and religious dissidents such as communists, socialists, trade unionists, and Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted for their beliefs and behavior and many of these individuals died as a result of maltreatment.
The Holocaust was one of the most horrible and dreaded events in history. Millions of Jews were killed, leaving many families devastated and hopeless. With the goal of racial purity, Adolf Hitler- along with many other Germans believed the Jews caused the defeat of their country, and led the Nazis to the elimination of Jews. For this reason, “Even in the early 21st century, the legacy of the Holocaust endures…as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day” (The Holocaust). Later, Hitler organized concentration camps, where mass transports of Jews from ghettoes were brought and typically killed also. However, the fortunate Jews that were not killed still had many restrictions on their
Many victims of the Holocaust, regardless of race, endured the same unethical punishment for having what the Nazi’s believed to be wrong beliefs. Though Jewish people were the main target by the Nazi’s, groups such as homosexuals, Gypsies, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also targeted. Locations that these people were imprisoned in varied from prisons to killing camps. There were multiple concentration camps, but certain ones had a greater importance due to their location, such as Sachsenhausen and Dachau, which were both located in Germany, which was where Hitler wished to rid the Jews from. Many prisoners of these concentration camps suffered the same fate, but it is important to know as many of their stories as possible. Karl-Heinz Kusserow, a Jehovah’s Witness during the Holocaust, faced imprisonment for refusing German authorities, faced hardships of the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, and was released from Dachau in 1945.
Hitler took this hatred he possessed for the Jews and his pursues of Aryan supremacy to an extensive degree. Between 1939-1945 Hitler took action, extermination, or death camps were established for the sole purpose of killing men, women, and children. Jews were not the only victims of the Nazis during World War II, The Nazis also imprisoned and killed people who opposed their regime on grounds of their ideology; Roma (Gypsies); Germans who were mentally impaired or physically disabled; homosexuals; and captured Soviet soldiers. Heinous crimes inflicted upon the prisoners within the concentration camps and during Hitler’s reign were intense beyond belief. So called camp doctors would torture and inflict incredible suffering on Jewish children, Gypsy children and many others. Patients were put
the non-Jewish and Jewish survivors were left with the impossible task of assimilating back into society. The odds were against them. Some of these odds set against them were restricted freedom and continuing of new forms of brutality. This was very difficult because antisemitism was still alive in the minds of the most radical people in not only Europe, but the whole world. Jews were afraid to go back to their homes and regain their property
The Jewish people have been one of the most persecuted groups in history since the days of Jesus, since the years of the Holocaust and still to this day (prezi.com). When the Nazis persecuted the Jews, one of the reasons given was the defeat of Germany in the First World War. The persecution of Jews reached its most destructive form in Nazi Germany, which made the destruction of the Jews a priority, culminating in the killing of approximately 6,000,000 Jews during the Holocaust from 1941 to 1945.
When thinking of the Holocaust and the discrimination included in it, we tend to think that only the jews were the ones “living” in the death camps, but that is false. Jews along with Political Prisoners (Communist, Socialists, and Trade Unionists),Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, Disabled Individuals and Homosexuals were all prisoners in these concentration camps because Hitler didn’t like them for
The Holocaust nearly made the Jewish population and religion disappear from the face of the Earth. From January 30, 1933 to May 8, 1945; Adolf Hitler, German politician and leader of the Nazi party, ran the Holocaust all over Germany and Eastern Europe. Prisoners and victims of the Holocaust include: the majority of the Jewish population, German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and people accused of socially deviant or socially unacceptable behavior. They were sent to many different areas that had different purposes. The most used places they were sent to are called concentration camps. Once they entered the concentration camps, there was no escaping; those people officially became prisoners. There were 23 main concentration camps and around 900 sub camps. Concentration camps tricked the Jewish people into coming into them by offering them a better life on the welcoming signs outside. Some of the main camps had many different inhumane uses. All of the camps are notorious for their cruel and evil ways of everything that they did to prisoners, such as the genocide the Holocaust caused (Concentration Camps, Killing Methods, Jewish Population).
The Holocaust was one of the most tragic and most brutal events in history. Many citizens all over Germany and Poland were persecuted, such as homosexuals. Over 5,000 homosexuals died in camps alone. Homosexual men faced harsh treatment by Nazis by being sent to work camps, subjected to hard labor, and attempts to “cure” them based on the Nazi belief that they were a disease to Germany.
The Jewish race lived in a time of hardships in the mid 1900’s as the Nazis began to take over Germany during the well-known era of the Holocaust. “The Nazis, who came to power in Germany on January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community (Children during the Holocaust).” Therefore, the Nazis began genocide with intentions to kill off all of the Jewish people under the command of Adolf Hitler. Many people were brutally tortured and murdered during this tragic time in Western Europe. However, Jewish children during the Holocaust were the most targeted and tortured groups of individuals.
Documented in A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust the Nazis saw the Romani’s as worthless out cast that sponge off of their superior race. In 1942 over twenty three thousand gypsies were shipped off to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the outbreak from the start of the war was one of the primary factors that caused the Nazis to send all these people to the death and labor camps (“Sinti and Roma”). Like the Jews, the Gypsies had been forced to attach a little black triangle to their shirts as well. The Nazis showed off their extremist views by suppressing these groups of people. They most likely had done this in order try and unite the country of Germany with a common enemy to fight against. The Holocaust Encyclopedia Says that the conditions that the Gypsies were forced to live in was like a petri dish for diseases such as typhus, smallpox, and dysentery, which the Nazis had no intent to keep clean because it too was another way in order to kill of the Gypsy population (“Genocide of European
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