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The Holocaust : The Rise Of The Holocaust

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The resentment and instability in Germany after the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War 1 fueled the rise of Adolf Hitler. His invasion of Poland in 1939 pushed Britain and France to declare war on Germany. However, for those of Jewish decent, war and suffering had begun years earlier. The Holocaust was a horrific and disturbing act of genocide against the Jews, scarring the hearts and minds of the for years to come. In 1923, while imprisoned for treason, Hitler wrote about his dream to rid Germany of its Jewish presence and influence. After he was released he took control of the Nazi party in Germany. In 1933 Hitler began his crusade to establish an all-German society. He referred to this as the Aryan race and based it off the purity of true Germans having blond hair and blue eyes. The Jews presence threatened the idea of a pure Aryan society. So, Hitler set out to eradicate them. The Holocaust became synonyms with death to the Jews across Europe. They went into hiding out of fear that someone would turn them into the Nazi Party. The first step of the Holocaust, after the roundup of many Jewish individuals, was the introduction of ghettos. These were small areas for the victims to live in, under the control of Hitler’s Nazis. In 1939 the first ghetto was set up in Piotrkow, Poland and numerous others followed. They were often overly populated. Michael Etkind stated that there were “a quarter of a million squeezed into an area where there should have been 80,000”

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