The Holocaust : The Destruction Of The Jews

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.

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.

Six million jews. Six million innocent men, women and children. Emerging from the ashes and corpses, one man had the intention of preserving this tragedy, yet at the same time preventing it. Elie Wiesel’s fulfilled his purpose of showing the heinous crimes of the Holocaust through the change of characterization of Elie before, during and after the events of Wiesel 's 1940 memoir-Night. The Holocaust is remembered as a stain on history, where a massive genocide occurred. but we must also recognize the souls and personalities that were killed and burned. Wiesel trembling hands picked up these ashes, personifying their ebony remains into a young child-Elie.

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 was one of the most considerable crimes committed against humanity. The Nazi’s boycotted all the Jewish stores. However, a minimum amount emigrated. Although at one point when Jewish wanted to flee, country's didn't accept them knowing the fact there's a lot of them. After the problem hit the Nazi’s that their are too many Jewish they began to discover ways to decrease the amount of Jews. Not until they planned to put them in camps. The Nazi’s put the Jewish in the ghetto to separate them from the Germans. The Jewish were treated miserably, they had the slightest amount of food that wasn't enough for them.

The Holocaust was a long, sad, and depressing period in time. Poland, Soviet Union, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Lithuania, and Holland are some of the countries that were included in the Holocaust. The word “Holocaust”, from the Greek word “holos” (whole) and “kaustas” (buried) was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the mass murder of nearly 6 million European Jews (as well as members of some other persecuted groups such as Gypsies and homosexuals) by the German Nazi regime during the second World War.

Countless events in the world have been caught in history books but between the ones that have held to the memory of people is the holocaust. The Holocaust was a very disturbing event that triggered an eye-opener for individuals about how harsh humans can be. The purpose for this is since the vast number of victims and questions as to what was the actual motive behind the need to defeat a whole community. Holocaust is an organized, state financed torment and slaying of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi government run by Adolf Hitler. Separately from Jews, other groups considered lesser or anti-establishment, such as Polish, Gypsies, and Romans were killed. There were numerous reasons for these gruesome murders, insensitive imprisonment and enslavements of victims who were forced into labor while starving.

In October, 1941 SS General Odilo Globocnik was authorized to institute a plan to systematically murder all Jews residing in the Generalgouvernement. This project received the code name of Operation Reinhard. To accomplish this elimination of approximately 2 million

The Holocaust of 1933-1945, was the systematic killing of millions of European Jews by the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazis) (Webster, 430). This project showed the treacherous treatment towards all Jews of that era. Though many fought against this horrific genocide, the officials had already determined in their minds to exterminate the Jews. Thus, the Holocaust was a malicious movement that broke up many homes, brought immense despair, and congregated great discrimination. The Holocaust was an act of Hell on earth.

Modernity brings about new ideas, technology, government and people together. People coming together from different cultures can create a feeling of superiority or inferiority, us vs. them. Although modernity bought anti-Semitism its “peculiar virulence”, in which Jews were resented simultaneously as both masses and elites, it was not the sole reason for the Holocaust. Those who insist that mass hatred and murder are natural among humans are incorrect, because anti-Semitism did not cause “inhabitants of a town or a village to simply fallen upon their Jewish neighbors and slaughtered them.” Yet, when asked about the cause of the Holocaust, many readily assume it to be anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism existed throughout Europe before Nazis ascend to power and continues to exist in Europe, but nothing like the Holocaust has or is taking place because of only anti-Semitism. Zimbardo’s theories explains why it isn’t cannot only be antisemitism because human are not evil, but evil is the exercise of power to exercise intentionally, harm(psychologically), hurt(physically), destroy(mortally) and commit crime against humanity. These neighbors who associated with Jews during Weimar, changed when Nazis came to power some Germans joined the SS, Gestapo and other Nazi roles. It was then their environment that changed them, which was not innate. Psychologically speaking, being around a hostile and violent environment can influence humans to turn that way.

At the end of the second world war, when the Nazi’s were already in the act of exterminating six million Jews and 25% of these Jews were children. This was called the “holocaust”. The Nazis wanted to end the entire Jewish population and its culture. . Adolf Hitler also known by only his last name, was the leader of the Nazi party and he demanded that the Jews were tortured and killed. This event became worst and worst slowly between 1933 and 1945. This event basically made the word “racism”. If you look back in time, this was the first time racism was used. The extermination of Jews gave the case of the word racism, which is why the word I used so much till this day

Dehumanization is the psychological process of destroying the enemy, making them seem less than human. The Nazis conducted dehumanization to the Jews, while they were imprisoned in the concentration camps. Certain things the Nazis would do is not feed them. “We had spend the day without food” (17). They would also make them cut their hair so that they would all look the same, losing someone's hair is like losing a part of their identity. “Their clippers tore out our hair, shaved every hair on our bodies” (35). Also, the Jews were instructed to stand for hours on end for roll call, where they lined up and they were counted before they went anywhere, and they were not allowed to sit down. “We stood up. We were counted. We sat down.

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 have 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 by 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.

Adolf Hitler was a man who commits many crimes against humanity and enforced harrowing treatment on innocent humans. Hitler was born in Austria on April 20, 1889. Hitler was raised by an emotionally harsh father, who disliked many of his interests. Therefore, nature and nurture qualities of his life may have influences his choices. Later, Hitler rose to power in the German politics. He used propaganda to influence people to follow him. Subsequently, he became the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, referred as the Nazi Party. From 1933-1945, Hitler was chancellor of Germany. He served as a dictator for the country and people. In addition, Hitler instituted many Anti-Semitic laws to exclude Jews from society. Since Jews had different physical characteristics and religious views, Hitler hated them for their perspective on life.

The Holocaust was a disturbing unique element of European history; it refers to the period from 30th January 1933 when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany to 5th May 1945 when the Second World War officially ended. “The Nazis, who came into power believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.” The Holocaust was responsible for murdering six million of the Jewish residence in Europe, the deaths represented two-thirds of the European Jewish population; the Jewish public was the Nazi regime’s primary target and the regime sought to wipe out the entire Jewish populace. The Nazi’s claimed that the Jews corrupted Germany and illustrated Jews as evil, Nazi’s believe that they could justify their treatment of Jews based on their racial theories. The Jewish inhabitants of Germany were murdered with the cruelest methods; they suffered from forced labor, starvation, disease, mass shootings, and the most notorious was gassing. Men and women experienced related traumas, while being held imprisoned in the concentration camps and or death camps; however, women endured incomparable circumstances that we cannot expect men to apprehend.