The Dust Bowl, The Ku Klux Klan, And The Great Depression

Anti-semitism, which is defined to be the hatred of Jews, played a major part in our world history, such as the Holocaust. The Nazis believed that the Jewish community was inferior to their own race, and wanted to get rid of them for good. Initially in the early 1930’s, Adolf Hitler conducted one of the worlds now largest genocides, the annihilation of the Jews during WWII. Nealy six million Jews died during the span of twelve years, which was ⅔ of the Jewish population in Europe, and he was able to do so using the four stages of isolation. Those of which, were the stripping of rights, segregation, concentration, and extermination. The stripping of rights was taking away the Jewish men and women's basic needs, stripping them of their German citizenships, forcing them to wear an armband of the star of David, and etc. The second stage of isolation was segregation. The Jews were kicked out of the comfort of their own homes, and were forced to live in an isolated area called the “ghettos”. The third stage was concentration. After a couple of months from being moved to the ghettos, the Jews were brought to concentration camps where they were forced to work for hours at a time under all conditions, they were starved and all were mistreated. The last stage of isolation is the extermination, which was the stage in which the Jews were killed. The Nazis used different methods to do so, many were shot, beaten to death, burnt alive, but most were brought into gas chambers where they were gassed with Zyklon b which killed all within 3-15 mins of inhalation. There was not much of an option for the Jews their only chance of making it out alive is by figuring out various tactics to survive. Surviving meant that they had to live within a grueling environment, despite the difficult circumstances. Regardless of all the hardships they faced during that time, they were able to survive and overcome them by using different strategies, such as trading with one another, using their skills, and made friendships and built allies with one another in the camps.

The 1930’s was a time of great struggle in the USA. The New York stock market crashed in 1929 and triggered a spiral of economic depression, which hit African Americans hard.

Robert S. Wistrich defined antisemitism as hostility and/or prejudice against the Jewish people or their religion of Judaism. Many people in today’s world instinctively associate antisemitism with Nazi Germany because of the mass genocide that took place. Hostility towards the Jewish people dates back thousands of years ago when the Roman Empire forced them away from their homeland that is now known as Israel. With the Jewish population forced from their homes they began to spread out all over the world and so did the prejudice against them. The Judaism religion was looked down upon in many parts of the world and people felt like it was their duty to treat the Jewish people with inequality. Antisemitism took a different turn when statesmen begin to use it in their campaign to gain the citizens support.

Anti-Semitism was used to carry out the final solution through persecution and later extermination of Jews. Anti-Semitism is the discrimination and extreme hatred of Jews. Anti-Semitism built a platform for the Nazi to take control of the people. Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat and made people in society believe that they were

Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Walt Disney was accused of being anti-Semitic, however, was never accused of making anti-Semitic slurs by his employees. The word anti-Semite was popularized in 1879 in Germany as a scientific word for judenhass which means “Jew hatred”, which has been its common use since 1879. Antisemitism is shown in numerous ways, from discrimination against individual Jews to planned attacks by police or even military attacks on Jewish people.

Anti-Semitism has been prevalent throughout the world since the establishment of the Jewish religion and unfortunately, traces of it can still be found to this day in the United States. What exactly is anti-Semitism? It is the intense dislike for and prejudice against the Jews; it can range anywhere from simple opposition to the Jews to vicious hatred displayed through physical torment. Some examples of the more publicized cases of violence against the Jews include the attack of Irish workers and police on the funeral procession of Rabbi Jacob Joseph in New York City in 1902, the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915, the assassination of Alan Berg in 1984, as well as the Crown Heights riots of 1991. I have

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

The ‘Dirty Thirties’ is perhaps one of the most known time periods in American History. During the 1930s, the worst and longest drought occurred in the United States, this was also know as the Dust Bowl. According to Christopher Klein, the Dust Bowl is considered both a man-made and natural disaster. In fact, many events contributed to the Dust Bowl such as poor farming techniques, a severe drought, and economic depression.

At the end of WWI in 1918, Germany’s economy was in ruins. There were very few jobs, and bitterness began to take over the country. According to the text, “Hitler, a rising politician, offered Germany a scapegoat: Jewish people. Hitler said that Jewish people were to blame for Germany’s problems. He believed that Jews did not deserve to live.” (7) This was the birth of Antisemitism--prejudice against Jewish people. Europe’s Jewish people have always been persecuted due to their “different customs and beliefs that many viewed with suspicion.”(7) Hitler simply reignited the flames, and a violent hatred was born.

Racial antisemitism was born in the Nineteenth Century when laws were passed in many European countries posing the Jewish people as second-class citizens, not receiving the same rights as others in society. While they had reached a level of religious emancipation in some countries, Judaism had become recognized as an ethnicity as well, and this ethnic difference from the Aryans therefore made them “inferior.” Pogroms began across Eastern Europe in the late 1800’s which resulted in

German anti-Semitism played the main role in Holocaust and extermination of Jewish population in Europe during World War 2. There are different views on this subject among historians. Some support the fact that German society was anti-Semitic and ordinary

Anti-Semitism is the hatred and discrimination of those with a Jewish heritage. It is generally connected to the Holocaust, but the book by Helmut Walser Smith, The Butcher’s Tale shows the rise of anti-Semitism from a grassroots effect. Smith uses newspapers, court orders, and written accounts to write the history and growth of anti-Semitism in a small German town. The book focuses on how anti-Semitism was spread by fear mongering, the conflict between classes, and also the role of the government.

In the decades leading up to the 1920s, industry in America boomed. Not only were monopolies created but mass production of many goods was the source of an economic boom. During the 1920s the economic boom led to some of the best times in history. However, later in the decade, devastation came in the form of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. These two factors left a sour taste in the mouthes of Americans as they moved into the thirties. The drastic difference between the economic high and low of the 1920s are due to a combination of the economic boom at the beginning of the decade and the Great Depression at the end, with numerous factors in between these two bookend events. During the best of the decade there was economic boom,

Farmers were affected by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. “Much of the Roaring '20s was a continual cycle of debt for the American farmer, stemming from falling farm prices and the need to purchase expensive machinery.” (UShistory.org). The farmers were struggling with money and affording the tools needed to grow a crop. The farming way of life was slowly fading away. During the era of the Dust Bowl, there was a major drought, so farmers struggled with maintaining enough water for their crops to grow.

The word anti-semitism means prejudice against and hatred for the Jews. It was apparent that Hitler had developed a severe hatred for the Jews, but unfortunately he was not the only one. Some people still believe it