The Middle-Class Holocaust : The Life Of A Middle Class Germany

In the Holocaust by Bullets Father Patrick Desbois recounts the tale of the mission he gave himself to discover and inspect all the mass burial sites of a million Jews exterminated by Nazi Mobile Units in Ukraine amid World War II. He started by wanting to travel to the burial site in Rawa Ruska where his grandfather Claudius had been taken during world war II. He finally got the chance to visit Rawa Ruska in the mid-90s.On another visit he asked the mayor where the Jews from the work camp were buried and the mayor said he didn’t know and he changed the subject. A year later there was a new memorial put up and at the celebration Desbois asked a violin player if he knew where the mass grave for the Jews from the work camp was and he knew and

     Throughout history the Jewish people have been scapegoats; whenever something was not going right they were the ones to blame. From Biblical times through to the Shakespearean Era, all the way to the Middle East Crisis and the creation of Israel, the Jews have been persecuted and blamed for the problems of the world. The most horrifying account of Jewish persecution is the holocaust, which took place in Europe from 1933 to 1945 when Adolf Hitler tried to eliminate all the people that he thought were inferior to the Germans, namely the Jews, because he wanted a pure Aryan State.

The role of ordinary Germans in the Holocaust is that of bystanders. The people of Germany watched on, without protest, as the Jewish people were murdered. Small and large jobs such as engineering and railway work contributed to the operation of the Holocaust and the murdering of Jews. The manipulation of the German people, through racist and anti-Semitic propaganda, speeches and polices from Hitler, meant that millions of Germans backed the plans to rid the nation of Jews. The idea that the Jews were responsible for economic, social and political issues was endorsed and it led to the idea that their banishment would lead Germany into a brighter future. Many people did not intend on aiding the Holocaust, but minor jobs that they did

Synopsis – Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a work that may change our understanding of the Holocaust and of Germany during the Nazi period. Daniel Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researches have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. Drawing on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen presents new evidence to show that many beliefs about the killers are fallacies. They were not primarily SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. “They acted as they did because of

The Holocaust has impacted the world in various of ways. A plethora of Jews were displaced in Germany and severely harmed. The effects of the Holocaust can still be viewed in today's society. The Nazis believed that exterminating the Jews was justified because the Jews were not only a low and bad race, but were affecting the lives of the Germans negatively. Hitler and the Nazis blamed them for all the social and economic problems in Germany. Adolf Hitler then planned to get rid of the all Jews living in Germany, or all around Europe. After years of Nazi soldiers ruling in Germany, Jews were consistently persecuted severely. Hitler’s final solution became known as the Holocaust, under the cover of the world war, with mass killing centers constructed

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.

During the reign of the Third Reich, the symbolization of the pink triangle was used to identify the thousands of gay prisoners who were sent to extermination camps under Paragraph 175, the law that criminalized homosexuality between men. Researchers say that an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 gay men died in these camps, however this figure does not include those who were interned and later released, let alone those who died undocumented and forever forgotten to history.¹ These thousands of men were forced through excruciating cruelties with little to no reprieve or recognition of the atrocities perpetrated against them. It is because of this that while they are not a distinct racial, ethnic, or religious group, the treatment of those who bore the pink triangle during the Holocaust follows the genocidal process and as such gay Holocaust victims should be considered sufferers of genocide.

I asked Karl Boem-Tettelbach how it was possible in the 1930s that someone could respect Hitler and what he was doing for Germany when Jews were forced to lose their jobs and leave the country. In his reply spoke, I believe, for millions of other Germans: "That never came up. Everybody thought the same, that you were in a big team and you didn't separate from the group. You were infected. That explains it a bit." (2) And as for actual officers, during the Nuremberg Trials, a Commandant named Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess had this to say of his indifference, "Don't you see, we SS men were not supposed to think about these things; it never even occurred to us. And besides it was something already taken for granted that the Jews were to blame for everything….It was not just newspapers like Sturmer but it was everything we heard. Even our military and ideological training took for granted that we had to protect Germany from the Jews….We were all so trained to obey orders without even thinking that the thought of disobeying an order would never have occurred to anybody." (3) So there is a delicate balance between conscious and unconscious actions of every individual of Nazi Germany. The majority was bewitched by the charismatic Hitler who not only gave them a reason as to why they were suffering with ubiquitous propaganda, but also promised to strengthen Germany until she was beyond restored. (4) For some it was an underlying hatred that had finally found a vent. For

“I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.” -Elie Wiesel. The Jewish people never want to forget what happened to their ancestors, what kind of jobs and tasks they were forced to do in their lifetimes. Jobs were a huge part of the Holocaust portion of World War II, only because there were not very many job opportunities available to much of anyone, especially the people of a Jewish religion. Jobs were limited for most people during the Holocaust. The Jewish people should have had more job freedoms than they did because they did not do anything wrong, the only thing the Nazi’s even remotely thought was wrong with them was their religion.

Even though Germany was left in a period of struggle and economic weakness after WW1, Adolf Hitler would take a stand by creating a party that would help refine the structure of the economy. This party, when abbreviated, was called Nazi, would also create harsh laws and unrelentless punishment. Due to the Nazi party’s quick growth, there was an immediate impact on lifestyle and politics for the people of Germany. The long term impact brought forth by the consequences or legacy of the Nazi party included a population decrease and an increase in deaths. To make both of these impacts, Hitler had to overcome many hard challenges.

The revival of the economy in conjunction with Hitler's diplomatic success contributed greatly to the German worker's acceptance or at least tolerance of the regime. In material terms though, the effects varied considerably from one class to another. The propagated classless society ideal therefore can be determined as a myth especially when aligned with the Hitler's foreign policy interests where big businesses with greater economies of scale and productive efficiency had to take precedence. In consequence the Mittelstand's position, which was promised in the 1932 election to benefit under the Nazi government, continued to weaken owing to the harsh commercial realities of the 1930s. Nazi preference for big business whose support was required for rearmament simply perpetuated this trend of economic decline which went back to the beginnings of Germany's industrialisation. In 1933 20% of the owners of Mittelstand businesses were under 30 years old and 40% over 60. By 1939 the corresponding figures were 10% and 19%. They were squeezed out of the economic community which by no means was classless or a reversion back to "blood and soil." For the industrial working

The average person’s understanding of the Holocaust is the persecution and mass murder of Jews by the Nazi’s, most are unaware that the people behind the atrocities of the Holocaust came from all over Europe and a wide variety of backgrounds. Art Spiegelman’s Maus: a Survivor’s Tale, Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution, and Jan Gross’s Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedbwabne, Poland, all provides a different perspective on how ordinary people felt about their experiences in the Holocaust both perpetrators and victims.

In Germany the economy was especially vulnerable since it was built out of foreign capital, mostly loans from America and was very dependent on foreign trade. When those loans suddenly came due and when the world market for German exports dried up, the well-oiled German industrial machine quickly ground to a halt. As production levels fell, German workers were laid off. Along with this, banks failed throughout Germany. Savings accounts, the result of years of hard work, were instantly wiped out. Inflation soon followed making it hard for families to purchase expensive necessities with devalued money. Overnight, the middle class standard of living so many German families enjoyed was ruined by events outside of Germany, beyond their control. The Great Depression began and they were cast into poverty and deep misery and began looking for a solution, any solution. By mid-1930, amid the economic pressures of the Great Depression, the German democratic government was beginning to unravel. The crisis of the Great Depression

Adolf Hitler came to power over Germany in January of 1933. He hated Jews and blamed them for everything bad that had ever happened to Germany. Hitler’s goal in life was to eliminate the Jewish population. With his rise to power in Germany, he would put into action his plan of elimination. This is not only why German Jews were the main target of the Holocaust, but why they were a large part of the years before, during, and after the Holocaust. Hitler’s “final solution” almost eliminated the Jewish population in Europe during World War II. At the end of the war and along with his suicide, the Jewish population would survive the horror known as the Holocaust and the Jews would eventually find their way back to their homeland of Israel

The Holocaust is most well-known for the organized and inhumane extermination of more than six million Jews. The death total of the Jews is this most staggering; however, other groups such as Gypsies, Poles, Russians, political groups, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals were targeted as well (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Introduction to the Holocaust). The initial idea of persecuting select groups of people began with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. In January 1930, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany after winning over its people with powerful and moving speeches. From this point forward, it was a goal for both Hitler and his Nazi Party to rid the world of deemed “inferior” groups of people (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Timeline