The Silent Holocaust : The Silent Holocaust

During genocides many things happen, homes and lands get rected, women get raped and many people die. A genocide that happened in 1981-1983 was in Guatemala. During the Guatemalan genocide it targeted the Mayan civilization. The first stage was classification. It is when they would put people in categories to determine them by their ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality. By the second stage symbolism was used. In this stage, a simple thing or idea represented them. Then the Guatemalan army used their power to deny the rights of the Mayan, which lead to denying the humanity of the Mayan. Organization then began. This meant that plans to start the killings began. Next, the extremist split the group through the use of propaganda. Then, armies

In the world during the time of the Holocaust, there was indifference towards the suffering of millions of Jews. When individuals reflect about the Holocaust, the majority of the time the responsibility of the terrible events is placed upon the perpetrators. However, bystanders and witnesses indirectly affected the victims of the Holocaust as well. The silence of these people played one of the largest roles in the Holocaust, they influenced it by avoiding any type of involvement and by becoming blinded towards the suffering of others. In his Academy Award acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel says, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”. This exert from his speech reveals the importance of the role that bystanders played in the

When many think of the Holocaust as a solely negative experience, and while it may seem easy to write the event off as a dark time in history that seems remote and unlikely to affect us today, there are some positive results, including the lessons that it brings for current and future humanity. The lessons that the Holocaust brings are applicable to every person in the world. While many of these lessons do focus on the negative aspects of the Holocaust, like what circumstances permit such a vast genocide and how many people can die because of widespread racial hatred, there are also those that focus on how some people, in all parts of Europe and throughout the world, retained their good human nature during the Holocaust. For example, what made some gentiles in Europe during that time willing and able to help Jews. Currently, Yad Vashem has recognized 26,513 rescuers throughout the world (Names), and the actual number of rescuers could likely be close to twice that amount (Baron,1). It is important that we analyze the reasons behind these rescuers’ choices to be upstanders instead of bystanders because we can learn about our own motivations when we face decisions between helping others and protecting ourselves, and possibly those we love, from harm. Fulfilling one’s self-interest was a potential motivation for helping Jews that will only be briefly addressed. This type of rescue potentially benefitted both the Jews and the Gentile rescuers; these Gentiles only helped Jews survive because they found personal gain, likely social or economic, in the action (Baron). However, in the situation that existed while rescuing the Jews, most efforts included the high possibility that both the rescuer and the rescued would end up worse off than they had begun with no potential for personal gain on either side. So those rescuers’ motivations are less easily explainable.

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.

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once stated, “No human race is superior; no religious faith inferior. All collective judgements are wrong. Only racists make them.” Imagine being discriminated against for something you couldn’t control; like the way you look or talk, what you believe in or the way you live, how would that make you feel? Now imagine being dehumanized for that something you can’t change. It may sound preposterous, but during the holocaust that’s precisely what happened. The dehumanization of the Jewish midst the Holocaust is vital to learn about because it enlightens us on the unfair bigotry, ghastly living conditions, and how the Jewish had their identity stripped away.

It’s about the jews and how and what happened to them after the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the time where about six million jews and one million other people dying. Most people were killed because they belonged to different races and religions. The Nazis wanted to kill people that weren’t from their same religious group. The Nazis also killed people who disrespected Hitler. Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party.

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.

The Jewish Holocaust is often described as the largest, most gruesome holocaust in history. It began in 1933 with the rise of Adolf Hitler and lasted nearly twelve years until the Nazi Party were defeated by the Allied powers in 1945. The expression “Holocaust” originated from Greece which is translated to “sacrifice by fire”. This is a very proper name considering the slaughter and carnage of Jewish people inflicted by the Nazis. In addition to the Jewish, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexual, and physically and mentally disabled were targeted by the Nazis. Although the numbers are not exact, it is estimated that approximately eleven-million people were killed during the Holocaust. This includes about six-million Jews and one-million children. The persecution begins on April 1, 1933 when Nazis initiated the first action against Jews. It began with a boycott of all Jewish businesses and only became more extreme as time went on. In September of 1935 Jews were excluded from public life and stripped of citizenship and marriage rights. This was an unprecedented action that was enforced by the German government through the Nuremberg Laws. Several other anti-Jewish laws were established during the buildup of World War II. During these dismal years, countless Jews were sent to “camps”. These “camps” ranged from concentration camps, extermination camps, labor camps, to prisoner of war camps. Nevertheless, all of these camps treated Jews inhumanly. Dachau, Germany was the home of

From 1933-1945, it was a period of time when the Jews were targeted as an enemy. This period of time is called the “Holocaust.” This is when the Germans killed over 6 million Jews and it was a genocide. They also killed any Jew that they could recognize. The Germans during this time were called Nazis. Nazis were the people that controlled the concentration camps and liberated people. Concentration camps were the places where the Nazis took the Jews to be killed. In the concentration camps there were gas chambers. They were the places where they took the children and their moms for a “shower”. They thought it was a shower, but it was actually a place where they would end their lives. When all the jews went in the Nazis threw a chemical that burnt everything. The people who did that were the Holocaust war criminals. They were the Nazis that killed 1,000s of jews and didn’t care. The most dangerous war criminals were Alois Brunner,Beate Kunzel Klarsfeld, John Demjanjuk, Hans Lipschis, Hans Frank, Alfred Rosenberg, and Gerhard Sommer.

People such as bystanders stood by all around the world and watched as the innocent were killed.

There were many groups of people, other than the Jews, that were victims of persecution and murdered by the Nazis. The groups affected by the Holocaust were the Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, political dissidents and dissenting clergy, people with physical or mental disabilities, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals. According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, There is evidence as early as 1919 that Hitler had a strong hatred of Jews. As Chancellor and later Reichsfuhrer, Hitler translated these intense feelings into a series of policies and statutes which progressively eroded the rights of German Jews from 1933-1939 (“Victims”).

Genocide has been around for many centuries. One of the most known happened in 1915 when residents of the Ottoman Empire were told to leave upon orders from the government. Due to the long and harsh travels, there was an enormous amount of disease trapped in the concentration camps. With that alone, there was an estimated amount of one million Armenians killed. Another example of genocide is when the Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government in 1975. Citizens who were suspected of receiving an education were tortured at the Tuol Sleng prison. In four years, approximately two million Cambodians died in the “Killing Fields.” A Civil War in Rwanda aroused tension between the Tutsi minority and Hutu minority. When the Rwandan president’s plane was shot down, there was no doubt that a war was about to break out. The two minorities found themselves in the center of the conflict; in the end, the “outbreak” claimed the lives of an estimated 100,000 people. About a decade ago, the Sudan government showed an act of genocide when they murdered 300,000 Darfuri citizens and displacing two million. In addition to that, Native Americans died from colonial conflict, disease, and discrimination devastated their population. Within this time period, over nine million Natives died

Persecution and Perseverance are displayed throughout Jewish history from the time of 1800 BCE to modern day. In the story of Abraham and the covenant with God, Hebrews suffered through the drought in Canaan, became slaves of the Egyptians, survived many plagues, fought for their land, had The Great Temple destroyed twice and, exiled from their promise land where the Jewish faith was banned. In more modern times Jewish people are still persecuted and discriminated against. The Holocaust took place from 1933-1945 which involved discrimination against Jews that lead to isolation and persecution. The Holocaust is one of the most remembered and important events that has lead to their overall perseverance. The Holocaust, was lead by Nazis Germany and their collaborators, to abolish mainly Jews living in Europe. The Nazis believed that they were superior and that the existence of Jews threatened them. Hitler sent Jews to concentration camps and the ghettos where they were forced into labour and were slaughtered in mass shootings or killed by carbon monoxide gas. All Jewish people's names were replaced with identification numbers and separated from their families. During the time of the Holocaust, it was very hard for Jewish people to have hope of survival and that there would be “light at the end of the tunnel” but, they never gave up or never gave in and persevered against the hatred towards them and the empt of completely annihilating all Jews. Another example of perseverance of Jewish people is after the destruction of The Great Temple which was seen as the center of the Jewish world/ faith, people thought that was the end of Judaism because it was known that If you couldn’t go to the temple, you weren’t upholding the covenant of the Jewish faith and with Yahweh. Once the temple was destroyed, the Jewish preserved against not having a place of worship and the era of “portable Judaism” was procreated. Synagogues were created as a place for Jews to worship. A synagogue was anywhere with a minimum of ten men and a Torah in a room. Synagogues are still used as a place of worship but are now more accessible and are filled with things such as stain glass windows which honor God by making the synagogue look beautiful

For the following task I have chosen to use an image and a poem. A key narrative that surrounds the holocaust is silence. Silence is demonstrated in different forms through losses of family, tragedy and other several aspects that have had a negative effect in our lives. When referring to the Holocaust where Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor, not only did he separate the family bond and religion, he provided harsh treatment and conditions which many children had to suffer from watching. In the following image that has been chosen, the way in which silence is connected to this photograph is the facial expressions indicated by the children. The mouths of the children are closed with faces of pity and brooding as they are worried and

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.