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Social Effects Of The Holocaust

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The Holocaust was the persecution and the murder of six million Jews by Hitler, the nazi party and its collaborators. The meaning of the word holocaust is "sacrifice by fire." During the holocaust the government was the Nazi party. The Nazis, who came to power in Germany, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. Germans thought the Roma's (gypsies), homosexuals, and the disabled people were a threat to the Germans as well. They used these groups as a scapegoat due to the depression after the loss of World War II. Hitlers goal during the final solution aimed to isolate Jews from society and drive them out of the country. (ushmm.org) …show more content…

At 1:20 a.m. All over Germany, Austria and other Nazi controlled areas, Jewish shops and department stores had their windows smashed and contents destroyed. Synagogues were especially targeted for vandalism, including desecration of sacred Torah scrolls. Hundreds of synagogues were systematically burned while local fire departments stood by or simply prevented the fire from spreading to surrounding buildings. Regarding the economic impact of the damage from Kristallnacht and the resulting massive insurance claims, Hermann Göring stated the Jews themselves would be paying for the damage that happened during Kristallnacht. Goebbels told the nazis to stop attacking at 5:00 the 10th of November. The rioters burnt over 1,000 Synogogues, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested to work in concentration camps, 91 people were killed not counting the suicides, and the stores that weren't destroyed, were boycotted over 100,000 stores. Hitler still thought he wasn't successful enough with the Jewish Problem, therefor there was a second solution. The second solution succeeded more in the Jewish problem since the effects of Kristallnacht lead to a large amount of emigration of Jews from Germany. (Kristallnacht- the Night of Broken …show more content…

Many of the troops found the massacres to be difficult. Some of the perpetrators suffered physical and mental health problems, and many turned to drink. Himmler realized this during a visit to Minsk in August 1941, Himmler witnessed an Einsatzgruppen mass execution first-hand and saw that shooting Jews was too stressful for his men. The result of this problem was the gas van, a mobile gas, which employed carbon monoxide called Zyklon B from the truck's exhaust to kill victims. Gas vans made their first appearance on the eastern front in late fall 1941. Einsatzgruppen killed about 1.5 million innocent Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and anti- Nazis.

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