The Holocaust : Stages Of The Holocaust

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.

Finally, many purely hated Jews because they were not Aryan. Germany was one of these countries. Hitler, the leader of Germany, has carried hate for the Jews since early childhood. Primarily, he blamed them for his mother’s death along with him not getting into his dream school, Vienna Art College. Also, they were blamed by Germany for defeat in WWI and as the cause for unemployment. However, mainly Jews were persecuted because of the way they looked. At the time, Hitler wanted a racially pure Germany. He believed that by adapting the Darwin theory of survival of the fittest, he would be able to create a stronger generation and kill those that are impure or disabled.

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.

Hitler believed that the German people were part of an 'Aryan race,' a superior group that should be kept pure to fulfill their mission of ruling the world. He felt that the Jewish people were 'sub-human,' when in actuality they were virtually the same as his 'Aryan race.' Not only did Hitler have a personal hatred toward the Jewish people, but he also blamed them for 'stabbing Germany in the back' after Germany's defeat in World War I. Hitler used them as scapegoats because they were a minority and were easy to put the blame on. 'Historians agree that the Holocaust resulted from a confluence of various factors in a complex historical situation. That anti-Semitism festered throughout the centuries in European culture is centrally important; the Jews were (and are) a minority civilization in a majority environment. In periods of crisis, instead of searching for the solution of

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

By blaming the Jews for the economic crisis that Germany was suffering through as well as their defeat in WW1, Hitler targeted the Jews as the country’s main enemy. According to him, the Jewish were directly responsible for Germany’s problems. Hitler hated the Jews leading up to the Holocaust because he believed that the Jewish financiers were responsible for sending the world into its first World War, causing the deaths over 100,000 Germans. According to the Nazis the “Aryan race” was the best and strongest race. Jews were of another inferior race. In fact so inferior that they were not considered to be “people” by the

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.

When discussing The Holocaust, our minds tend to jump straight to the genocide of the Jewish populations of Europe. This is because of the approximate 11 million people killed during The Holocaust; roughly 6 million of them were Jews. Many people are now left to wonder why Hitler and the Nazi Party specifically targeted the Jews for genocide. The main reason was because the Nazi Party took the idea of nationalism to an extreme, new level. Hitler also thought the Jews were responsible for Germany losing World War 1. Hitler may have been influenced during his childhood on the ideas of anti-Semitism. According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, the opposition and discrimination of Jews is known as

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.

What did America do during the time period in which the Holocaust was happening? To start, the Holocaust was the genocide that killed six million Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany. America did not do much to help at this time. The US did things like making immigration laws way more difficult than it needed to be. They also turned away the St. Louis that boarded almost a thousand Jewish people and when given the chance to help, they chose not to. The United States during World War II did not consider saving the people being killed by Nazi Germany a prime concern.

The Holocaust was a horrific genocide that occured before and throughout World War II. This massacre was led by Adolf Hitler, a German politician who soon became the leader of the Nazi party. This genocide included specifically torturing innocent Jews and whoever got in the Nazis’ way. Unfortunately, this caused about eighteen million deaths overall.

“Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, describing his feelings when he first arrived in Vienna in 1925 and began to develop anti-Semitic ideas. The Holocaust was when the Nazi’s eliminated the Jewish people under Hitler’s rule. This was one of the most gruesome events in world history. There were three main reasons why Hitler started the Holocaust and exterminated the Jews: he had a need for power; he was convinced the loss of WWI was because of the Jews; and he was raised as an anti-Semitist.

During the 20th century in the early stages of World War II a horrendous Jewish genocide, the hHolocaust, that occurred in Western Europe, ended with the loss of 6 million Jews. One of the most important things that can be learned from the holocaust, is howhw everyone around the world reacted to the situation. In modern-day society, we witness tragic deaths of young teenagers that commit suicide, mainly due to being bullied, and no one stood up for them. Even today, there are still examples ethnic cleansings taking place today, like in areas such as Myanmar. Fear holds most people back from being who you they should be, or prevents them from doing what they want to do.

The most widely known aspects of Nazi ideology are their hatred of Jewish people and their tireless efforts to exterminate the entire race during their rule. This distinctly Nazi belief of antisemitism is not one that the Nazis created. It instead had existed for several thousand years throughout Germany and all of Europe. As Stackelberg and Winkle explain, “The origins of the stereotype of Jews as immoral materialists can be traced to the unwillingness of Jews to give up their religion in favor of world-renouncing Christianity” (Stackelberg and Winkle, Anti-Semitism, p. 2). This feeling of hatred towards Jews persisted for centuries, especially in countries that had a majority of Christian citizens. There were a number of people that continually perpetuated these anti-Semitic views with the works that they published and their actions towards Jews. A great

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.