The Holocaust And The Eugenics Movement

“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.

Genocide is the destruction of an ethnic, racial, or religious group. The most famous genocide, conducted by the Germans, is the extermination of the Jewish population known as the Holocaust. There are other genocides such as the Armenian or Darfur genocide, but the Holocaust is the one talked about and studied the most around the world today. Museums exist in Washington D.C, Los Angeles, and parts of Europe that focus primarily on this dark time in history. Vast amounts of books, movies, and documents concentrate on the Holocaust. Why is this chapter, between 1939 and 1945, discussed and examined? The answer lies within people who experienced the Holocaust such as Elie Wiesel, Jay Frankston, and Franks Shatz. These men have gone through hell and back, but they believe in one thing. That is, the notion of never again. The goal is to educate future generations on what really happened, so history does not repeat itself. Never again should people of any race, religion, or ethnicity, go through the horrific past of the Holocaust. In their writing, Wiesel, Frankston, and Shatz do a great job using pathos, logos, and ethos to convey their message of never again for future generations.

As Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel once said, “To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice,” that is why we are called to remember. Many movies, novels, and story representations of the Holocaust have been created in order to spread the memory of the past. An important part of remembering is learning, and therefore not repeating the same mistakes once again. Movies may find it difficult to represent the Holocaust accurately, while also giving it meaning and artistic expression. The writer, Edwin de Vries, and the director, Jeroen Krabbé, strive to represent the legacies of the Holocaust and Jewish culture in the film, Left Luggage (1998), based on a novel by Carl Friedman through a portrayal of the daily lives of Holocaust survivors and their children in late 1960s Antwerp, their direct confrontations with their memories of the Holocaust, and character development. The film shows us many examples of the legacy of the Holocaust as it is passed through the children of survivors, and how it continues to affect their daily lives. The audience understands the intentions through depictions of muteness and the necessity to remember.

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

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.

When the war ended in 1945, millions of Jews had perished. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime had almost entirely wiped out a single race of people in what would become known as the Holocaust. However, the Jews were not the only people who had been stripped of their dignity and killed. There were other groups who the Nazi’s persecuted against. The Roma, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Political Prisoners were all systematically gathered up and killed. When the Holocaust gets mentioned, many don't talk about the other millions of innocent people who were murdered alongside the Jews. Many don't see these people as victims at all. The number of people murdered during the Holocaust reaches close to eleven million people. “Contragenics” is the term used to talk about all of the groups who were murdered under the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. These innocent lives were lost in the Holocaust, and while history hasn’t forgotten, humanity has.

Anti-Semitism as a term to describe hatred of Jews was not used until the second half of the nineteenth century, but a bias against Jews had existed for thousands of years. This resentment of the Jews as a people can be traced back to theological roots as well as practical concerns in early Europe. The most significant and accepted origin of anti-Judaism is the death of Jesus. Jews were branded as the murderers of Christ and Jesus’ followers developed a deep hatred of them. This undertone to Christianity endured over time and became an inherent facet of the religion. Later, when Jews attempted to assimilate into European societies, they faced strong discrimination and resistance. Other citizens viewed them as economic competition. In addition, negative stereotypes evolved about the Jews in relation to their

Eugenics is the pseudoscience of obtaining desired traits in a population through controlled repopulation, specifically by preventing those deemed “unfit” by “Nordic stereotypes” from breeding. Most modern day Americans do not realize the origins of eugenics, which was planted by Charles Darwin and Sir Francis Galton and bloomed in America, and what effect it had on the attempt to create a master race in Nazi Germany. America played a very influential role in German eugenics by collaboration between scientists and funding from American corporations. The negative connotation associated with this science is usually directed towards the scientists of the Holocaust under Adolf Hitler, and not towards American scientists who also partook in horrific experiments and performed inhumane acts as well. This is absurd when you consider that the United States was the backbone of the eugenics movement internationally and only developed a negative perspective of the research when it became affiliated with the holocaust and the troubling actions of Nazi Germany.

Jews were targeted by hatred by other religious groups because of their religion. Traditional Anti-Semitism, started nearly two thousand years ago. Traditional Anti-Semitism was rooted in religion. Judaism, a monotheistic religion, led to a lifetime of exclusion for many of its followers. In the beginning, when Judaism was first developing, believing in a religion which only had one God was out of the ordinary. The other religions were all polytheistic, which made the Jewish people a target. The people of this time period didn’t like the idea of this new belief.

The idea of eugenics was first introduced by Sir Francis Galton, who believed that the breeding of two wealthy and successful members of society would produce a child superior to that of two members of the lower class. This assumption was based on the idea that genes for success or particular excellence were present in our DNA, which is passed from parent to child. Despite the blatant lack of research, two men, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Jon Alfred Mjoen, played to the white supremacists' desires and claimed that white genes were inherently superior to other races, and with this base formed the first eugenics society. The American Eugenics Movement attempted to unethically obliterate the rising tide of lower classes by immorally

The holocaust made it a bad time for everyone. Hitler’s final solution was to get rid of a whole entire Jewish population, relocate Jews, or put them in concentration camps. The Nazis final solution included their plan to remove Jews from society by death camps, relocation, and concentration camps.

Eugenics, the word that got its bad reputation years ago through an event that changed history: the Holocaust. First dubbed by Francis Galton in the 1880’s, the word Eugenics stemmed from the words “good” and “generation.” (Eugenics-Meanings) Eugenics means the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population. This improvement is done through discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics); or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). (Contemporary)There have always been heated discussions over right or wrong, moral or immoral concerning

The roots of eugenics can be traced back to Britain in the early 1880’s when Sir Francis Galton generated the term from the Greek word for “well-born”. He defined eugenics as the science of improving stock, whether human or animal. According to the American Eugenics Movement, today’s study of eugenics has many similarities to studies done in the early 20th century. Back then, “Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes.” (www.eugenicsarchive.org) According to Merriam-Webster, the modern day definition of eugenics is, a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of

Anti-Semitic means discrimination toward Jews just because they are Jewish. Hostility towards Jews dates back to ancient times; from the days of the bible to ancient times ,Jewish people have been criticized and pushed just because they have a different religion and did not fit in with everyone else. The rise of Christianity greatly increased the hatred towards Jews. Instead of just considered outsiders Jews were now seen as people who rejected Jesus and crucified him. By the middle ages Jew were considered to be barely human and they were called Christ killers. Jewish people were forced to live in the ghettos, they were accused of poisoning the wells and rivers in times of major disease epidemics. In the 19th century thing started to get a little easier for Jewish people as there was a decline in Christianity and a rise in the Jewish belief. But later on in World War two they became Germany's justification seeking to kill every Jew. between 1939 and 1945

According to Dictionary.com, anti-Semitism is the discrimination against or prejudice toward Jews, (Dictionary.com, 2016). Conflict has existed between Christianity and Judaism since Biblical times, (Katz, 1996). By law the Jews were obliged