The Holocaust In The Twentieth Century

As Stephen Ambrose, American historian and biographer, once said, “The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.” As Stephen Ambrose observed, the Holocaust is recognized as a time in which the worst possible crime of all was committed. Millions of people died, and not many people tried to do anything to stop it.

While examining the works of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi it becomes apparent that the holocaust was a horrendous time in our human history. However, although both writers went through similar experiences during this time; both seem to reflect and dwell on things differently such as their point of view and lives in the camps as well as the different themes they focus on. In this analysis the stories of the two authors will be compared and as stated above will also focus on how they recount their experiences.

It’s about the jews and how and what happened to them after the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the time where about six million jews and one million other people dying. Most people were killed because they belonged to different races and religions. The Nazis wanted to kill people that weren’t from their same religious group. The Nazis also killed people who disrespected Hitler. Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party.

Adolf screamed, "If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job. As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected, for example, in Munich on the Marienplatz-as many of them as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink. They will stay hanging as long as hygienically possible. As soon as they are untied, then the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew!"

The Holocaust, one of humanities most horrendous acts and a large topic in the history of World War II. Led by the German National Socialists, the Holocaust was an attack on innocent people for reasons of race, sexuality, nationality, and religion with their main target being the millions of European Jews who they saw as an ‘inferior race’. Hitler and his higher up stripped Jews of everything. He took their money, their homes, their jobs, their nationality, their dignity, and eventually he took their lives. In Peter Longerich’s Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Longerich takes an in depth look at Nazi politics and how it eventually led to their Final Solution of the Jewish Question. His research that began in the late 1990s, when he questioned both schools of Holocaust studies, the Intentionalists and the Structuralists. His studies in Europe led to a novel that that outlines the entire history of the Holocaust, the ideas of Judenfrage, and the implementation of Judenpolitik on the Jews of Europe from 1933 to 1945.

There are so many remarkable people who have gone before us and shaped the world into what it is today. With the passing of yet another Veterans Day, people were reminded of the extraordinary sacrifices made by ordinary men and women who were unfortunate enough to have lived during times when their nations were at war. Many ordinary citizens lost their lives as a result of the war, just as soldiers did. While some survivors simply lived out their post war lives, others survived and influenced the world. One person who survived the atrocities of the Holocaust during World War II and used his experiences to improve social, political, and religious conditions throughout the world, is Elie Wiesel. Through the words of Elie Wiesel, the public can witness the evils of war, keep these memories alive in the collective recall of future generations, and take action upon witnessing injustices of its kind.

Nowadays, people tend to forget the morality of human beings. For instance, the people in today’s world are attracted to greed or power letting their mind and body rot them. However, are we doing a right in letting people like that win? It might not seem much or anything, but as history has shown us otherwise with World War II. Like letting a tyrant leader like Adolf Hitler take over different countries and bring in what is believed the most horrific discrimination ever known. Therefore, it is right to agree with Elie Wiesel a former target of the Nazi Final Solution that the moment race and religion are involved then that soon must become the center of the universe’s attention.

In his novel, Night, Elie Wiesel recounts the horrific experiences that he faced as a survivor of the Holocaust during World War II. The following passage presents the impossible struggle to maintain a decent quality of life in the face of war:

The Holocaust is well known around the world, and many people do not realize the devastation and the technology that was used in that time. What we knew before was that the Holocaust resulted in the death of six million jews, and was controlled by the Nazi Regime. Adolf Hitler was the dictator of Germany and came up with the Final Solution, a plan to exterminate all the people of Jewish faith or race during World War II. This then brought in the concept of concentration camps. Concentration camps did not just hold Jews captive, they also targeted other groups such as Gypsies, African-Germans, Homosexuals, Atheists, and the physically and the mentally disabled. Now, it is common knowledge that that many people were killed in gas chambers or

As we grow up our parents teach us how to be respectful and very well-mannered. They enforce the importance of saying, “Please, thank you, and excuse me,” when needed. Parents also insist we listen and respect our elders, because they have authority over the world since they have been here the longest. We were raised to comply with the demand of someone who had authority over us. According to Patricia Werhane (1), “In the early1960’s Stanley Milgram undertook his noteworthy study of human obedience to authority. Puzzled by the question of how otherwise decent people could knowingly contribute to the massive genocide of the Holocaust during World War II, Milgram designed an experiment that sought to cause a conflict between one’s willingness to obey authority and one’s personal conscience.”

One common assumption that people make about the Holocaust is that the atrocity was an event unique to world history. It is not often taught in United States history classes that there were events previous to World War II that set precedence that allowed the Holocaust to occur under Nazi Germany rule. Generally, history classes do not explore colonialism outside of the United States, so it is no surprise that very few people are aware of German colonialism in Africa, let alone how Germany’s actions there served as a precursor to the Nazi policy of genocide years later. By examining the events that took place under German rule in South West Africa, one can gain a better understanding of the mentality behind the Nazi Germany genocide policy, as discussed in Isabel Hull’s article Military Culture and the Production of “Final Solutions” in the Colonies: The Example of Wilhelminian Germany.

The holocaust began in 1933 and was when millions of Jewish people were being tortured and killed in concentration and death camps. Hitler, who was the leader of Germany at the time, was an anti-semitic and thought of the Jews as lesser than the Aryans. The Nuremberg Laws, which were enforced in 1935, stated that if someone had a Jewish grandparent, they were considered a Jew and stripped of their civil liberties. In 1938, anything owned by or in relation to the Jewish people was destroyed-this was known as Kristallnacht, and the brutality towards them only got worse. During 1939, Germany invaded Poland and set up ghettoes, where Jews were forced to stay in terrible living conditions. During this time, thousands of mentally and physically disabled

World War I, the first actual war played out on a global scale. During the time of the war, many people, military and civilians a like, lost their lives. However, among all of these people, one man got very lucky in the sight of death, for you see this man had been partially blinded after being exposed to mustered gas, and when when stumbling on the battle field, a British solider by the name of Henry Tandey who saw this man, took pity on him and let him go. The man that he saved was Adolf Hitler. Soon after the war ended, Hitler joined the National German Workers’ Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), commonly know as the Nazis. The end of the war was also a very personal and emotional disaster for Hitler as well. It brought about the threat of demobilization, tearing him from the only community in which he had ever felt at home and returning him to a civilian life in which he had neither direction nor career prospects. However, the next few months would only for shadow what Hitler was going to do.

The Great Depression played a big role in helping the Nazi Party capture power. Many nations were suffering from the Great Depression in 1930, including Germany who had to pay for the war reparations. During this period of economic and politic crisis, the country had been easily influenced by the politics parties. They wanted someone who is capable and had what it takes to be their leader to lead them through the huge crisis that they were facing. Most Germans who are in desperate state as they wanted Germany to be like once, able to be proud of and not in such a state where they had to struggle to fulfill the almost impossible terms of the Treaty of Versailles. They considered that period as a disgraceful decade in their history. Due to

Known as one of the most horrific events in history, World War II (WW2) caused tremendous adversity and suffering amongst the lives of people across the globe. However, what is most concerning about the war, was what happened behind closed doors, specifically within Germany. The Holocaust is still considered one the worst ethnic cleansing attacks in the world. Although there is an endless amount of research and hard evidence of the Holocaust occurring, certain groups of individuals strongly reject it. Known as “Holocaust Denial”, this conspiracy theory has always been personally intriguing due to several reasons and will be analyzed more thoroughly.