The Jewish Community

The history of Jews in host cities often depict a story of success or of failure when it comes to relations between the Jews and the Christians in Europe. Historian Jonathan Elukin, author of Living Together, Living Apart, presents the integration as a success process with rare, and special cases, of failure. On the other side of the spectrum is historian Raymond P. Scheindlin. Scheindlin’s novel, A Short History of the Jewish People, presents many cases of integration between the Christians and Jews that led to massacres and brutal endings for the Jewish community. There are many monumental events that take place during the long span of time that oversees European Jewish history, and both historians study and evaluate the events, however, they do so through different lenses.

“The War Against The Jews” by Lucy Dawidowicz explores a very dark time in history and interprets it from her view. Through the use of other novels, she concurs and agrees to form her opinion. This essay will explore who Dawidowicz is, why she wrote the book, what the book is about, what other authors have explored with the same topic, and how I feel about the topic she wrote about. All in all, much research will be presented throughout the essay. In the end you will see how strongly I feel about the topic I chose. I believe that although Hitler terrorized the Jews, they continued to be stronger than ever, and tried to keep up their society.

Since the beginning of the Judaism, the Jewish people have been subject to hardships and discrimination. They have not been allowed to have a stabile place of worship and have also faced persecution and atrocities that most of us can not even imagine. Three events that have had a big impact on the Jewish faith were the building and destruction of the First Great Temple, the Second Great Temple and the events of the Holocaust. In this paper, I will discuss these three events and also explain and give examples as to why I feel that the Jewish people have always been discriminated against and not allowed the freedom of worship.

It is a tragedy that the terror and destruction of the Holocaust could have been avoided if the warnings were taken seriously. In Night, by Elie Wiesel, Moshe the Beetle tries to inform the community of his experience, but they do not adhere to his warnings. Similarly, my great-grandmother also sailed across the Atlantic, to warn her relatives. She informed them of the possible danger, but they too did not listen. Likewise, Jan Karski also saw the danger and tried to warn the allied leaders of the upcoming threat. In all three stories, warnings were given and then rejected. This essay will discuss responses to the Holocaust, by examining warnings regarding community members, family members, and Righteous Amongst the Nations. From the very beginning of Hitler’s rise to power, his ultimate goal, was evident in Mein Kampf and threats against Jews should always be taken seriously.

In 1940s Germany, during Hitler’s “Third Reich”, Jewish families were determined to be a threat to the economic and spiritual development of the nation. In order to “save” Germany, the first solution was simply to force Jews into ghettos. Later this led to them being forced into concentration camps where they were systematically destroyed. Millions died in such a manner and of the survivors, many families were destroyed. Jewish families were separated primarily because during the forced labor expeditions of the concentration camps, they were separated according to gender. Men went one direction and women went another; after the war was over, many assumed their families were dead and if anyone had survived they hoped that they might one day reconvene somewhere far safer than Germany. Nazi emphasis on utility and practicality led to the separation of many Jewish families, as they gladly relocated Jews according to their needs and killed those who they had no use for.

Racial antisemitism was born in the Nineteenth Century when laws were passed in many European countries posing the Jewish people as second-class citizens, not receiving the same rights as others in society. While they had reached a level of religious emancipation in some countries, Judaism had become recognized as an ethnicity as well, and this ethnic difference from the Aryans therefore made them “inferior.” Pogroms began across Eastern Europe in the late 1800’s which resulted in

In 1939, Hitler was unsure of what he was going to do with the Jews; the Nazis were tossing around options and ideas with the goal of removing Jews from the population. The German invasion into Poland, allowed for the first ghetto, regarded as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews. Ghettos were enclosed, isolated urban areas designated for Jews. Living under strict regulations, with unthinkable living conditions, and crammed into small areas, the ghettos destroyed all hope of retaliating. In this paper, I will discuss what life would be like to be a Jew inside one of the 1,000 of ghettos within Poland and the Soviet Union. I will imagine myself a member of the Jewish council, describing the

Most of us have heard of the Nazi party’s horrific, genocidal regime on destroying the Jewish race, but what events led up to their dire judgement? In this study I aim to uncover the events, reasons and changes which led to the Holocaust and the further changes in the treatment of the Jewish race by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

Through the course of history, the Jewish people have been mistreated, condemned, robbed, even put to death because of their religion. In the Middle Ages, they were forced to wear symbols on their clothing, identifying them as Jews. The dates 1933 to 1945 marked the period of the deadly Holocaust in which many atrocities were committed against the Jewish people and minority groups not of Aryan descent. Six million innocent Jews were exterminated because of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” This paper will exhibit how Adolf Hitler used the three anti-Jewish policies written in history, conversion, expulsion, and annihilation to his advantage.

Between Dignity and Despair, a book written by Marion A. Kaplan, published in 1998, gives us a portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany by the astounding memoirs, diaries, interviews with survivors, and letters of Jewish women and men. The book is written in chronological order of events, from the daily life of German Jewish families prior to when the Holocaust began to the days when rights were completely taken away; from the beginning of forced labor and exile to the repercussion of the war. Kaplan tries to include details from each significant event during the time of the Holocaust. Kaplan

During the duration of World War II, the Jewish people of Europe were subjected to such inhumane actions at the hands of the Nazi party. Ellie Wiesel, in his memoir Night, describe this demoralizing treatment in great detail. As the reader delves deeper into Wiesel’s experiences, the dehumanization of the Jewish people becomes greater and greater. First, they were stripped of their possessions, then their names, and finally their dignity, and though the Nazi tried to finally stripped them of their humanity, they were unsuccessful.

During World War II and the Holocaust, morality collapsed. It was no longer easy to differentiate between what was good and what was evil. With a world filled with starvation, dehumanization, and dictatorship, Jewish children had a rough life. They were not free to run away and play; instead they were either in hiding or a camp. The three sources that will be analyzed in this essay demonstrate how the Jews and Gentiles risked their lives to help save innocent Jewish children.

To conclude, Jewish partisans, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and non-Jewish people led Jews to exemption. Day after day we are reminded of these terrible times. From political to comedic views, there is no way of forgetting what happened in Germany. It is an amazing feeling to know that there were some individuals who stood against the Nazis, proudly. Without those magnificent people, the war may have never ended, who knows? From young to old, big to small, this event had an impact on everyone’s hearts, and it continues to today. Maybe it is a lesson well learned, that making an impact and trying to help does not always turn out so

Peter Longerich's Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews is a recent contribution to the contemporary scholarly literature on the subject. The book was originally published in 1998 in German, under the title Politik der Vernichtung, Politics of Destruction. This 2010 English-language release is, as the author claims, shorter in some areas and longer in others. The primary additions include a chapter on anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic, which adds considerable meat to the contextual evidence that Longerich includes in his history of the Holocaust. Moreover, the author draws on the release of new primary source data from the archives in Warsaw and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, which have only recently been revealed, archived, and cataloged.

The holocaust was a bleak and unrecoverable part of the history of the twentieth century that will always be remembered. Millions died for no reason except for one man’s madness. Although many people know why this war happened many don’t know when and what events lead up to this: the way Hitler came into power, or when the first concentration camp was established, and what city it was in, why Jews were hated so much by Hitler, and why the rest of the country also hated them as well as, and what the chronology of the Holocaust. These are some of the things I will explain in my paper.