Those familiar with history will know of the Holocaust, the brutal extermination effort led by Adolf Hitler seeking to kill any person who was not of the Aryan race or who was considered an enemy of the Third Reich. Approximately eleven million people, six million of which were Jewish, were killed at concentration camps during this period. The discovery of these camps was made public shortly after the end of World War II. Many German citizens were shocked to discover these camps in their own backyards. This begs the following question: how were the Nazis able to imprison and exterminate vast numbers of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and disabled people while most German citizens appeared to remain oblivious of the horrors going on around them?
While there is a great deal of information readily available concerning WWII, this specific topic is a bit more nuanced and information is less readily available. However, there are a few sources providing meaningful insight as to just how the German population neglected to put all of the pieces together. One example of this is an article put out by the Museum of Tolerance’s Online Multimedia Learning Center. It is entitled “36 Questions About the Holocaust” and is in a question and answer format. It touches on a wide array of different information. One of the questions it explicitly asks is “What did people in Germany know about the persecution of Jews and other enemies of Nazism?”. This source also addresses how German citizens were
This is why the holocaust was allowed to happen; the average citizen had no idea what was really happening. They were too distracted by the German propaganda efforts to pay any mind to what really happened to the person who used to be their neighbor.
What causes conflict? Well, conflict is caused when there is a disagreement or miscommunication. The Holocaust was a huge and bloody disagreement that led to World War II and was a horrific event that took place in the 1930-1940’s. A man that we’ve probably all heard of, named Adolf Hitler, came into power and participated in the slaughter of nearly 6 million jews, 250,000 disabled, and 196,000-220,000 Gypsies (according to the National Holocaust Memorial Museum website). These deaths were all over the European continent that were under German rule. My position on the main cause for the Holocaust was that the end of World War I left Germany in poverty. With the government in corruption, the people were desperate for change, so they allowed Hitler into power with the belief that others could control him if he did something bad. This obviously wasn’t true.
Imagine witnessing the systematic killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children. It doesn’t sound real when you first hear it, but, trust me, it is very real. The Germans committed mass genocide on the Jews and then tried to hide all of it, realizing the atrocious deed that they had done. They tried to silence all those poor souls who mercilessly died without doing anything. Very few survived this large killing.
In the book They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer posits that even though people may have subconsciously known that the Holocaust was occurring, it was much easier for everyone to ignore that fact and carry on with their lives, just as the Americans did when they learned of Japanese Internment. When Mayer attempted to interview Germans about their knowledge of and actions in response to the Holocaust, most of them claimed ignorance as to the event and its effects. Mayer, however, does not believe entirely in the ignorance of the citizens, instead claiming that each citizen had an opportunity to know, but simply did not want to, as this knowledge may have required action. It was much easier to ignore. Two comparisons are made to the US.
During the Holocaust, German citizens residing near concentration camps were fully aware of the atrocities being committed so close to their homes. Though they hopefully realized that the mass slaughter of innocent Jews was horrific and inhumane, no one stood up for the Jews’ violated human rights or made an effort to save Jewish lives. King Jr. writes that if he had “lived in Germany at the time, [he] would have aided and comforted [his] Jewish brothers” (King Jr. 1350). By not siding against the Nazis, German citizens essentially showed that they supported the Final Solution. Had they taken direct action, even by simply petitioning to the government or by voicing their disagreement, countless Jewish lives could have been
Antisemitism, the hatred for the Jewish people, has been called the longest hatred in history. This history is deep rooted and has existed for thousands of years, taking different forms throughout its existence, and intensifying up until and through the Holocaust, to then diminish to an extent but still be prevalent in most societies. Antisemitism exists in different forms, religious, ethnic, and political. The presence of Christianity as the predominant religion in Europe can be noted as a driving factor in religious and ethnic antisemitism, as can the Holocaust. Whereas instances such as the Islamic view on Judaism can be
An abstract is a brief summary—usually about 100 to 120 words—written by the essay writer that describes the main idea, and sometimes the purpose, of the paper. When you begin your research, many scholarly articles may include an abstract. These brief summaries can help readers decide if the article is worth reading or if addresses the research question, not just the topic, one is investigating.
The Holocaust was a terrifying and horrific feat in our worlds past as no one seemed to want to help the Jews escape there mass onslaught led on by the Nazi forces throughout WWII. They were rounded up like animals and treated as slaves going to camp after camp waiting their turn in the gas chamber. Did anyone know what was happening? Did people try to escape? These are just some of the many questions brought up by skeptics and some historians.
When many think of the Holocaust as a solely negative experience, and while it may seem easy to write the event off as a dark time in history that seems remote and unlikely to affect us today, there are some positive results, including the lessons that it brings for current and future humanity. The lessons that the Holocaust brings are applicable to every person in the world. While many of these lessons do focus on the negative aspects of the Holocaust, like what circumstances permit such a vast genocide and how many people can die because of widespread racial hatred, there are also those that focus on how some people, in all parts of Europe and throughout the world, retained their good human nature during the Holocaust. For example, what made some gentiles in Europe during that time willing and able to help Jews. Currently, Yad Vashem has recognized 26,513 rescuers throughout the world (Names), and the actual number of rescuers could likely be close to twice that amount (Baron,1). It is important that we analyze the reasons behind these rescuers’ choices to be upstanders instead of bystanders because we can learn about our own motivations when we face decisions between helping others and protecting ourselves, and possibly those we love, from harm. Fulfilling one’s self-interest was a potential motivation for helping Jews that will only be briefly addressed. This type of rescue potentially benefitted both the Jews and the Gentile rescuers; these Gentiles only helped Jews survive because they found personal gain, likely social or economic, in the action (Baron). However, in the situation that existed while rescuing the Jews, most efforts included the high possibility that both the rescuer and the rescued would end up worse off than they had begun with no potential for personal gain on either side. So those rescuers’ motivations are less easily explainable.
When the Holocaust is mentioned, the first thing people think of is usually the concentration camps or Hitler. Most people forget about the other tragic events that occurred outside of the camps. More importantly, they usually identify they blame the wrong people who had committed these crimes. The Einsatzgruppen had operated in the territories and areas owned by the Germans. These Killing Squads were told to murder people and had done so willingly. They had found the most brutal ways to torture and murder the Jews of Eastern Europe and Asia.
After WW2, there was a thing called the holocaust. There were many concentration camps all over Germany where many Jews were killed in different ways. It happened between WW1 and WW2, 1933-1945. My position on why this happened is that Germany was going through a rough time, so Hitler wanted their country to resemble power. Read on to learn more about the causes and ways the Holocaust could have been avoided.
The Nazi leadership aimed to deceive the German population, the victims, and the outside world regarding their genocidal policy toward Jews. Positive stories were fabricated as part of the planned deception. One book printed and distributed in 1941 reported that in Poland, German authorities had put Jews to work, built clean hospitals, set up soup kitchens for Jews, and provided them with newspapers and vocational training. By 1944 most of the international community knew about the camps and were aware that the Germans and their axis partners brutally mistreated prisoners although exact details about the living conditions were unclear. The existence of the Nazi camps was known by most of the European governments long before the beginning of World War II.
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz
Most people didn't know what was going on, and people didn't really know where Jews and gypsies etc. were going, all they knew was that they were being removed. When word and photographs got out into the public view about what happened in these camps, everyone is shocked to see so many dead bodies. With the role of media, the international response to the war crimes in the Holocaust was to establish an international tribunal and it was agreed to punish those responsible of crimes.
The Holocaust is most well-known for the organized and inhumane extermination of more than six million Jews. The death total of the Jews is this most staggering; however, other groups such as Gypsies, Poles, Russians, political groups, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals were targeted as well (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Introduction to the Holocaust). The initial idea of persecuting select groups of people began with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. In January 1930, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany after winning over its people with powerful and moving speeches. From this point forward, it was a goal for both Hitler and his Nazi Party to rid the world of deemed “inferior” groups of people (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Timeline