preview

The Concentration And Abuse Of The Jews And The Holocaust

Decent Essays

The word Holocaust is derived from a Greek word that means “sacrifice by fire”. This term is very appropriate for this period in history because of the gruesome and brutal ways that people were killed. The Holocaust is described as the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.” (www.ushmm.org) The Holocaust took place in Nazi Germany during World War II, and was the Nazis’ way of trying to exterminate the Jewish people because they did not consider the Jews as humans and believed them to be an inferior race. Adolf Hitler himself once even said that “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” During the Holocaust, many ethnicities and groups of people faced discrimination and punishment, but Jews were the main target of the Nazis. They were subjected to very inhumane treatment such as gas chambers, meaningless beatings, hangings, and many jews were forced to go into the crematorium, a large blazing fire that incinerated anything and anyone who entered and caused the deaths of thousands-if not millions-of Jews. The Nazis killed almost two out of every three Jews in Europe at the time, resulting in the devastation and collapse of many Jewish communities. As a result many Jewish people planned to leave Europe and start new lives in Israel. Only a very small percentage of European Jews survived through the hardships of the Holocaust, and even fewer shared their story with the

Get Access