Although I already knew of man’s inhumanity to man, the tour of the Museum of Tolerance opened my eyes in a new sense. All the questions I had come up with were answered, and I learned of many other incidents were the human race made mistakes. I learned that the Jews were the only group singled out for total organized annihilation by the Nazis. Every single Jew was to be killed according to the Nazis' plan. Nazi soldiers raided the Jews homes and and took them to camps where they were forced to work or be gassed. The whole family was taken, but only those capable of working long and hard were spared. The explanation of the Nazis' hatred of the Jew rests on their distorted world view that all of history was a racial struggle. They considered the Jews a race whose goal was world domination and who were a threat to Aryan dominance. They believed that all of history was a fight between races which should end in the triumph of the superior Aryan race. In their eyes, the Jews' racial origin made them criminals …show more content…
There were "Righteous Among the Nations" in every country overrun by the Nazis, and their deeds often led to the rescue of Jewish lives. Neighbors or friends of the Jews would help by warning the families of the oncoming danger, by hiding Jews under the floorboards in their house, or by lying to the Nazi officers about the Jews race and life. These people risked their own safety to help the Jews who were being hunted by the Nazi’s. In the museum we had the chance to read stories of these amazing acts of kindness provided by normal people sick of watching others perish. Some of the stories I read were about a couple who pretended a young Jewish girl was their maid and was not Jewish, another was of a German family that hid three children under the floorboards in their kitchen for the entire wars
Throughout the course of human history, crimes against humanity have continuously shaped perceptions of civilisation and society. The 20th century was undeniably a pivotal epoch in the development of such atrocities, with the first prosecution for a crime against humanity being the Holocaust. One of the most defining historical atrocities, the Holocaust was the systematic genocide of six million Jews and five million other minority groups enacted by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The responsibility for the conception of the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ is an elusive notion which has been extensively studied and theorised by two schools of thought; the Intentionalists and Functionalists, which both focus on the notion
In the early 1900’s, one man was able to rile up and take command of an entire nation by utilizing the stress put on the people from previous conflicts, the natural psychology of humanity to create a “reprehensible” other figure, and historical antisemitism. Mankind must never forget the effects of this man’s ideals, actions, and followers. Humanity must never forget the rights he violated for the sake of his goal. This man was Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party in Germany during WWII.
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.
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
Overall, the Holocaust was an awful moment in the world’s history, a Jewish survivor even said that occasionally during this time, “There were days when...” the survivor “...envied a dog” (Galler). But there isn’t just bad that produced from this event, there is importance we can learn from from this tragic event. It taught the world a lesson on how one man with lots of hate and power can affect
During the duration of World War II, the Jewish people of Europe were subjected to such inhumane actions at the hands of the Nazi party. Ellie Wiesel, in his memoir Night, describe this demoralizing treatment in great detail. As the reader delves deeper into Wiesel’s experiences, the dehumanization of the Jewish people becomes greater and greater. First, they were stripped of their possessions, then their names, and finally their dignity, and though the Nazi tried to finally stripped them of their humanity, they were unsuccessful.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, there are many important symbols that are used repeatedly to help solidify the first person account of his experience of the Holocaust. The major, overarching symbol is, of course, the night itself. The night is used by Wiesel to represent death and the potential darkness of the human soul. For him, the acts carried out during the Holocaust represent the fullest of humanity's capacity for evil.
“Why didn’t Jews leave Germany sooner?” “Why did they not resist their deportation to the death camps more forcefully?” – Questions of this nature have been asked continuously throughout the last five decades. Hindsight can give the impression that the encounter between Jews and the Third Reich during the Holocaust had to unfold as it eventually did, prompting the question of why Jews failed to see the proverbial writing on the wall. However, if historians have found it troubling to determine precisely how the Nazi Regime planned to deal with German Jews at any given moment between 1933 and 1941, how much more challenging must it have been for the Jewish men and women living within Nazi Germany to do so at the time.[1] Those who inquire as to how German Jews could have missed the writing on the wall make their first fatal mistake when they assume there was writing left to be read. The reality is that Nazi Germany was as perplexing to Jews at the time as it still is to us today.[2] A detailed answer to the subject in question is available in the history of Jewish life before 1938. The earlier years of Nazi Germany are crucial for understanding Jewish responses to Nazism because these years shed light on the incremental nature of Nazi persecution. However, the daily lives of Jews before the November Pogrom of 1938 are often eclipsed by the later, horrific years of genocide. The following pages will push past the focus on the history of the Holocaust and offer a close
The Nazi slaughter of European Jews during World War II, commonly referred to as the Holocaust, occupies a special place in our history. The genocide of innocent people by one of the world's most advanced nations is opposite of what we think about the human race, the human reason, and progress. It raises doubts about our ability to live together on the same planet with people of other cultures and persuasions.
Over the years and past life there has been so much genocide in this planet earth, the ones who suffered were the gay,german,jews,and the special needs. About 6 million jews and 5 million non jews were sadly dead and murdered.What's genocide some may ask genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation, people have learned to trust and treat everybody equally and with respect and let nothing tell each other apart. And in the huge event called the holocaust where such genocide happened with hitler there were some specific people who helped save jews even knowing the circumstances that come with it.
Throughout history, the world has seen many horrible acts committed against its people, but of all these acts none are as horrendous as the Holocaust. This event led to the prosecution and execution of millions of people just because those from the Nazi Regime felt they were superior. The Nazis invaded Poland because of this assumed superiority over the Jewish population, and since Nazis thought that the Jews were beneath them they sent them to concentration camps to be worked like animals and to die. The entire world saw this as inhumane, but unlike the Polish and German Jews, the entire world did not experience this great atrocity first hand.
The holocaust was one of the horrific events that came out of WWII which showed the barbaric nature of man. The holocaust was the systematic murder of millions of people including ethnic Jews, Poles, the Roma, Soviet prisoners, people with disabilities, homosexuals, and political and religious prisoners, which brought the number of Holocaust victims to more than 13.5 million; specifically, however, the holocaust describes the elimination of more than 6.5 million European Jews during World War II through a program of systematic, state-sponsored extermination committed by Adolf Hitler 's Nazi regime. The holocaust was terrible because individuals, organizations, and governments made choices that fostered hatred, legalized discrimination, and ultimately, allowed mass murder to occur. Art Spiegelman, author of Maus I and Maus II, does a great job illustrating how good Germans were at doing everything very systematically. It was implemented by the Nazis, not over night, but gradual as they “couldn’t [have] destroy[ed] everything at one time.” He illustrates the complex stages for the Jewish genocide through the eyewitness account his’s father, Vladek, ultimately showing the reader that the holocaust was not an accident, by any means. This essay will address the stages that led up to the holocaust according the to Art Spiegelman’s Maus I and Maus II, which includes: identifying the problem, the Jews, stripping away their rights, segregating them from society, and finally
The famous, world-renowned scientist Albert Einstein once said that "we cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings." Yet, there came a tragic time, not too long ago, when even the basic, most primal nature of the human race was questioned. Why would our society, as a whole of human civilization, go to such means just to slaughter our sisters and brothers of another realm, another faith, or another race? The appalling events that ensued during the cataclysm of World War II still impact many today, grim battle scars passed down the years through morbid tales and painful memories. To this day, many Holocaust horror stories still exist, but one of Hitler 's fatal racial extermination plans, a hushed
The Holocaust began slowly. Age-old prejudice led to discrimination, discrimination to persecution, persecution to incarceration, and incarceration to annihilation. And mass murder, which culminated with the killing of six million Jews, did not begin with the Jews nor did it encompass only the Jews. The violations of one group’s rights are seldom contained only to that group (George 26).
Many religious conflicts are built from bigotry; however, only few will forever have an imprint on the world’s history. While some may leave a smear on the world’s past, some – like the homicide of Semitic people – may leave a scar. The Holocaust, closely tied to World War II, was a devastating and systematic persecution of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime and allies. Hitler, an anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, believed that the Jewish race made the Aryan race impure. The Nazis did all in their power to annihilate the followers of Judaism, while the Jews attempted to rebel, rioted against the government, and united as one. Furthermore, the genocide had many social science factors that caused the opposition between the Jews and Nazis.