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.
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” (Uschman 94)That quote is from a nazi war camp survivor, his words echo the attitude of the era, the same attitude that allowed something as awful as the Holocaust to occur with little resistance. However, even after hitler's final solution was thwarted people still suffered. People were left poor,scared, and traumatized. It left governments scrambling to recover control and strength. The stories you don't get to see. Even today the Holocaust still impacts us in one way or another.
During the Holocaust Hitler used guns but in time he included gas chambers because they were more efficient and had a quicker impact on killing the Jews. The rivers and streams ran red with blood where the shooting had taken place. The living conditions for the Jews, were unbelievable, Germans began transporting Jews and others to the concentration camps and death camps in Poland. The first gassing was on the 17 march 1942, the death of the people inside the chambers occurred just after a few minutes as the result of internal suffocation caused by the gas. In order to ensure that no one remained alive, the gas chamber was not opened until half an hour had elapsed. The concentration camps provided an ideal location for executions, The concentration camps were
Ian Kershaw empathetically states that “The Holocaust was the systematic, extermination of six million Jews by the Nazi government and their allies during World War II.” He further add that it wasn’t until after Adolph Hitler “became Chancellor of the German government, he began targeting the Jews as racially inferior to the German people (Kershaw, 1985).
The holocaust was the mass murder of 6 million European Jews by the German Nazi regime during World War 2. Adolf Hitler hated the Jews and blamed them for Germany losing World War I. He considered Jewish people to be less than human. Hitler also believed in the superiority of the Aryan race. Once he became chancellor of Germany, Hitler took away all of the Jews rights as human beings. Hitler forced the Jews to live in ghettos. The Jews would be transferred to concentration camps, where they would do hard labor. The Jews died in the concentration camps by diseases, starvation, or the cold. Some camps had gas
The Holocaust was an extermination of Jews. Adolf Hitler, a powerful dictator, tried to wipe out the entire Jewish population with his Nazis. He sent the Jews to his concentration camps, where they were starved, beaten, and shot. The rest worked, and some even managed to survive. When Hitler killed himself, the war came closer to an end, and the remaining Jews were saved. The Holocaust was truly a horrific event, and changed the course of history forever.
At first, the Nazis were only killing political opponents like Communists and/or Social Democrats, for which their harshest persecution was used. Many of the first prisoners sent to Dachau (The first official concentration camp opened near Munich in March of 1933) were communists. By July, the concentration camps run by the Germans held around 27,000 people in what they called “protective custody.” The Nazis had huge rallies and acts of symbolism such as burning of books by Jews. During the years of 1933 to 1939, the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were able to leave Germany got out quickly, but many were left behind, and they lived their lives in a constant state of uncertainty and fear. During the fall of 1939, Hitler started the so-called Euthanasia Program. The Euthanasia Program allowed Nazi officials to select around 70,000 German citizens institutionalized for mental illnesses or disabilities. These Germans were to be gassed to death. After prominent German
The Holocaust has impacted the world in various of ways. A plethora of Jews were displaced in Germany and severely harmed. The effects of the Holocaust can still be viewed in today's society. The Nazis believed that exterminating the Jews was justified because the Jews were not only a low and bad race, but were affecting the lives of the Germans negatively. Hitler and the Nazis blamed them for all the social and economic problems in Germany. Adolf Hitler then planned to get rid of the all Jews living in Germany, or all around Europe. After years of Nazi soldiers ruling in Germany, Jews were consistently persecuted severely. Hitler’s final solution became known as the Holocaust, under the cover of the world war, with mass killing centers constructed
The Holocaust was the attempt by the Nazi regime to systematically exterminate the European Jewish race during World War II. The Holocaust was a reference to the murder of around six million Jews and other minority groups such as homosexuals, gypsies and the disabled (Wiesel, 2008).
There are many social forces that affect any society. However, there may be more prominent social forces in a society, or country that has experienced a traumatic event that effected their entire country or society. Germany is a major example of a country that went through an incredibly traumatic event. The Holocaust is the traumatic event that hit Germany beginning in the 1930’s. The Holocaust was a period in time from 1933 to 1945, in which Jews experienced discrimination. Out of nine million Jews that were living in Germany, over half of them were killed in the Holocaust. All the Jews that were killed were killed because of prejudice and discrimination against them. An event as traumatic and massive as the Holocaust has no choice but to affect the country of Germany.
The holocaust was the systematic, state-organized persecution and murder of at least six million jews. 100 days after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Nazis began having book burnings to get rid of un-German writings proclaiming the death of Jewish intellectualism. This was one of the first acts that foreshadowed the destruction Hitler would have in Germany. Since Hitler and the Nazis felt that all Jewish peoples made Germany impure, their goal was to put an end to the existence of all Jews. Nazis required the elimination of Jews from German life. Their first nationwide action against
The holocaust was a time of pure darkness. The German Nazi’s thought their race would be better off without Jews and so they decided to kill them off. The Nazi’s were a group who was under Adolf Hitler’s control and had the power to kill Jews. The Nazi’s were basically Hitler’s soldiers. Adolf Hitler was the current Chancellor of Germany during that time. The Nazi’s however did not only target Jews which accounted for nine million of Europe’s population alone, but also homosexual’s, Jehovah’s witnesses, Gypsies, disabled individuals, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, communists and socialists. The holocaust plays a role in the start of World War II. During the war, the Nazi’s managed to wipe out hundreds of Jewish communities and ended up killing around six million people total. They used to make Jews wear a badge on their clothes when going anywhere to show everyone they were Jewish. It used to be a law for Jews to wear such garments up until the nineteenth century and if they failed to do so, there was severe punishment. This is how Nazi’s chose whom to persecute.
The Holocaust not only affected the areas where it took place, it affected the entire world. Even though Jewish people were the main victims in the Holocaust, it also left lasting effects on other groups of people. Both the Nazi and Jewish decedents still feel the aftermath of one of the most horrific counts of genocide that the world has ever encountered. The cries of the victims in concentration camps still ring around the globe today, and they are not easily ignored. Although the Holocaust took place during World War Two, the effects that it had on the world are still prominent today.
The word Holocaust means a sacrificial offering that is completely burned. The Holocaust was a state-sponsored time when Jews were murdered in a genocide by the Nazis and its leader, Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany at the time, during World War II. Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I and other German problems. This included the lack of jobs, financial problems, etc.. The Germans believed that their race was more superior compared to the Jews. The Holocaust also killed many priests, disabled people, homosextuals, political opponents, and Communists.
Inmates resembled skeletons and were so weak they were unable to move. The smell of burning bodies was ever present and piles of corpses were scattered around the camp. However, you could be “saved” from the crematoria to be used as test subjects to cruel experimentation and used as lab rats for any experiment the scientists wanted to conduct. Later in the war, extermination camps were built. These were specialized for the mass murder of Jews using Zyklon B to ensure a painful, long, and torturous death. The bodies would then be thrown into the fire and all clothes, teeth, and shoes would be sent to pursue the German war front. At max efficiency, 20,000 people would be killed in the gas chambers a day. As the red Army approached near to liberate the Jews in concentration and extermination camps, SS officers sent prisoners on a death march across hundreds of miles, where they ran with no food or water, no matter the weather, until they reached the closest camp. SS officers proceeded to blow up the camps to hide the genocide from the
The Holocaust “was the systematic bureaucratic, state sponsored persecution and murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaboration.” This callous event took place in Northern Europe from 1933 to 1945. It affected Jews, gypsies and other enemies of the state. The Holocaust was perpetrated by Nazi Germans. The cause of the Holocaust was scapegoating, dehumanizing Jews and other people and anti-Semitism.