The Effects Of Dehumanization Of The Holocaust

“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.

The Holocaust systematically murdered 11 million people across Europe, more than half of those people were Jewish. The Jews were blamed for the German’s failures, such as World War I. As a result, Hitler established anti-Semitism throughout his army and the majority of Europe. The Holocaust consisted of three phases to annihilate the Jews. The phases did not create racial purity and they did not successfully annihilate all of the Jews as the Nazi party planned.

The Holocaust which was one of many of the controversial events that have happened in the history of our world demonstrated a significant amount of cruelty and dehumanization. Because of such a controversial event, many have suffered through physical and unfortunately psychological upheaval and distress. With previous knowledge and novels’ read on the Holocaust, it came to be known that the event was triggered through obedience and conformity due to the not specifically the Germans’ beliefs of anti-Semitic and propaganda, but more of leader Adolf Hitler. The time of the Holocaust was used to dehumanize which enhanced the understanding of mental health and human psychology. During the Holocaust, many psychological principles affected individuals forever. The principles include groupthink and of course knowing the outcome of the event. Such principles sooner explain the reality of life because it stresses how individuals react due to their past experiences like the Holocaust and most importantly how traumatic events build them as who they are today.  Innocent Jews went through starvation, terrible working conditions, and the elimination of race through torture such as gas chambers. Furthermore, the history of this controversial event is now being used to be alert of the health and wellness of those who have gone through such events that sooner change their behavior and mentality for the better or even worse.

The Holocaust was a mass murder of millions of individuals’ primary to and during World War II. “Only 54 percent of the people surveyed by the Anti- Defamation League (ADL) in a massive, global poll has ever heard of the Holocaust” (Wiener-Bronner). The Holocaust was from 1933-1945 and was run by German leader named Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a man who wanted to create his own race of people. Therefore to create this race, he wiped out anyone who did not have the specific descriptions that he wanted. For people to fit into his race, they had to have blue eyes and blond hair. This excluded the Jews and from then on Hitler slowly dehumanized them. In the concentration camp the first thing they had to pass was the selection test. The selection test was what the SS man (German soldiers) used to determine who was fit for work. Usually children, mothers, and elders were the first to die because they were not mentally fit for the work they were going to be given. People who passed the selection process either died of starvation, disease, fatigue, or assassination. It took twelve years before anyone intervened and by then it was too late for millions of people. Even though over twelve million people died during the Holocaust, genocides have still happened in Rwanda, Darfur and Cambodia.

The Holocaust was the murder and persecution of approximately 6 million Jews and many others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis came to power in Germany in January of 1933. The Nazis thought that the “inferior” Jews were a threat to the “racially superior” German racial community. The death camps were operated from 1941 to 1945, and many people lost their lives or were forced to work in concentration camps during these years. The story leading up to the Holocaust, how the terrible event affected people’s lives, and how it came to and end are all topics that make this historic event worth learning about.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places]”- Ephesians 6:12. This verse from a book of the Bible holds true in the event of the Holocaust. Dehumanization is the process in which the Nazis reduced the people of Jewish religion to nearly nothing just because the Nazis viewed the Jewish people as a nuisance. The horrendous effect of this process reduced the Jews not only in number, but also in spirit through many different unethicical actions. This helped the Nazis in many different ways. The German persecution of the Jewish as well as many other groups, had a generarion gapping effect on the people of

The Jews were dehumanized by first being stripped of their rights as a human and their identities. A quote from Maus I states that, “They registered us in … They took from us our names.” (pg. 6) The Jews were forced to be stripped of their clothes as a form of public humiliation. By doing this, they made everyone feel as if they were worthless and that they were not special in any type of way. The Nazis mowed people down in a “Holocaust of Bullets” and also subjected Jews to horrendous public humiliation by forcing them to strip in the streets. In the concentration camps the Jews also had to go through the process of getting all their hair cut off.

The Holocaust During World War II, a destruction known to many as the Holocaust began and slaughtered more than six million Jews. This event caused many to cower in fear before Hitler and his army. Many of the victims had not only their bones and life broken, but they also had their spirits taken away from them being replaced by fear. However, some victims were able to keep their head held high and triumph with the power of Love, Laughter, and Nature. One factor that caused many to endure was Love.

In the World War II-era, Jewish people were picked upon by the Nazis to kill off to “purify” their bloodlines. The Holocaust is an example of pure hatred and dehumanization. Dehumanize is to deprive someone of human qualities. The Nazis did this to the Jewish people by putting them in concentration camps to make them work to the brink of death, or they would kill them. They separated them from their families and took away all human rights from the Jewish people.

The holocaust, or Shoah was a systematic, planned program of genocide to exterminate all Jews. This government based program was carried out by Hitler, and its allies in the Nazi army during world war two. Approximately 6 million Jews were killed, and if the murder of the Romani, Soviet civilians and prisoners, the disabled, homosexuals, and others who apposed to Hitler’s religious, political and social views were counted, this number would be more like 11 to 17 million. The holocaust is generally described with two periods, 1933-1939, and 1939-1945, the end of WWII.

The Holocaust was an ultimate abomination of Nazi racism that occurred between 1938 and 1945. The word Holocaust derived from the Greek word holokauston, which stands for a burnt sacrifice that is offered whole to God. The word was chosen for this occurrence because of the amount of dead bodies that were cremated in open fires by Nazis. The Holocaust was known for the mass murders of European Jews that took place during the Second World War. European Jews were the fundamental victims during the Holocaust and seemed to be the most targeted. In 1933, approximately nine million Jews lived in Europe and settle in 21 different countries. It eventually would be seized by Germany during the Second World War. By 1945, around five or six million European Jews had been brutally murdered. A majority of them died in concentration camps that were build primarily for Jews. However, Jews were not the only victims that were persecuted by Hitler’s and his Nazi regime. A half million Gypsies, mentally or physically disabled persons, and Soviet prisoners from war were also discriminated victims to Hitler’s Nazi genocide. Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals were also persecuted in Europe.

The Nazis and Hitler used extreme propaganda in attempt for people to accept their actions. Hitler made the Jews out to be a problem and a threat to the purity and perfection of German society (Holocaust Encyclopdia: Nazi Propaganda ). In Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag in September, 1942, he states,

According to the texts, the Holocaust had a negative effect on the people who lived throughout it. Jews were first made to fear the Gestapo so greatly that they often felt they had to do as they were told. They were put in Ghettos and concentration camps where they were abused or treated like animals. Eventually, 6 to 9 million people died as a result of the Holocaust. According to three texts, Holocaust survivors suffered negative effects due to the fact they had been abused, lost loved ones, and were treated less than human.

It’s highly debated if revenge is a basic human trait or not, some say that to not want revenge is against human nature. Yet, after being tortured, starved, brutalized and massacred, after witnessing the death of millions and being stripped of their modern urges, those who survived didn’t care for revenge in the slightest. When the Jewish men and women who survived Nazi death camps and the slaughter of the holocaust were freed, they had been reduced to less than human. Their minds were numbed, and their focus remained only on what their basic survival instincts told them: food, water, sex, shelter. No revenge, remembrance, celebration, just survival. As awful as Nazis are, they were incredibly intelligent in WWII. For years, they looked into the psychology of humans and figured out how to make the Jewish “race” exactly what they thought Jews already were; subhuman. Dehumanization was a vicious process used in WWII to make Jewish laborers into the three-quarters human beings that Hitler thought they were.

Prevalent throughout literature of modern and past times alike, the horror genre provides a twisted thrill for the human race. The greatest horrors of existence, however, come from history rather than imagination, and have a sickening, instead of thrilling, effect. The violation of one’s natural rights is a shock to both the victim and witnesses, and eventually leads to a person’s physical and moral dehumanization, as depicted by the events of Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night. Night’s description of the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust portrayed the camps as having violated arguably all of the articles in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”; the Rape of Nanking, a second atrocity of World War II, mirrors these injustices. By dehumanizing groups such as the victims of the Holocaust, the offenders invariably lead the world to a solemn reflection on how best to defend the natural rights of the oppressed.