Undisclosed Victims of the Holocaust

After World War I, Adolf Hitler was one of the dictators that arose; which then gained power in Germany in its Great Depression. Hitler rose to power using techniques such as propaganda, censorship, charisma and terror, but that was not all he did. Hitler started his own fascist party in Germany and called it the Nazi Party. Later, Hitler developed anti-semitism, or prejudice against Jews and dehumanized them. He viewed Jews as a separate race not a religion. This caused many changes particularly to the Jews. During World War I the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews caused political, economic, and social changes.

Hitler was one of, if not the most infamous totalitarian leaders in all history to date. He gained that title by the cruel and inhumane ways he ruled Germany from 1933-1945. Hitler believed the “Aryan race”(people with pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes) was the “superior race” and those who were not Aryan were subhuman and not worthy of human rights. Hitler was determined to rid Germany of any and all Jewish people and people who were not his “superior race”. Anyone who stood in his way or even spoke out against him would be tortured and murdered the same way he tortured and murdered thousands of innocent Jewish people and others he believed to be subhuman.

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.

Both the Nazi Political Movemen,t in Germany, and the post World War II/Cold War attacks on homosexuals, were driven by similar goals. The Nazi movement arose after Germany had lost World War 1 and was being restricted heavily by the Treaty of Versailles. The country faced major inflation and extremely high unemployment rates. The Nazi party

Elizabeth Feldman –de Jang and Nathan Nothman are both survivors of the Holocaust, but just like every individual survivor, they share different stories. One of the few things that may unite them is the specific fact that they are both Jewish and despite all odds, they managed to survive and share their stories.

The Holocaust is a very large topic with many subtopics within, which many people have never heard of. One in particular is the Hidden Children of the Holocaust. Like a majority of individuals, I never heard of this topic before, until I started my inquiry work. Hiding children during the holocaust was an effort to save thousands of children’s lives. The children were hidden in different ways, either with false identities, underground, and with or without their parents. The children with false identities were allowed to participate in everyday life activities, like attend school and socialize with children their age, which in the long run this lead to less emotional and mental issues. However, the children that were hidden and not allowed to leave their hiding spots often faced boredom, pain, and torment. Some children were capable of being hid with their parents while other children were not. Depending on the situation the child was in, depends on the effects it had on the child during this time. In this paper, I will be discussing works by two scholars, Natalia Aleksiun’s Gender and Daily Lives of Jews in Hiding in Eastern Galicia and Judy Mitchell’s Children of the Holocaust. Aleksiun’s article talks about the daily lives of Jews in hiding and also about how they prepared their hideouts. Aleksiun’s article mainly focuses on children that were hidden with their families. In Mitchell’s article, he focuses on the hidden children and gives examples/survivor stories on what it

By 1921, Hitler was leading the National Socialist German Workers' Party. He was a very effective speaker and captivated audiences for hours. He was persuasive and told people what they wanted to hear. Because of this, he was a very successful propaganda artist. Driven by Germany's loss in WWI and humiliation, which was a result of the terms in the treaty of Versailles, Hitler found many followers who sympathized with his cause. After his political group failed an attempt to overpower the Bavarian government, he was arrested and jailed for nine months. While imprisoned, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which was his autobiography, and it was full of his political ideas as well as the policies for what would become the Nazi organization. Later, he would use this book to spread his ideas and indoctrinate people into the Nazi party. At one point in time, he tried to destroy all other books in Germany. He required that Mein Kampf be taught in the schools, and children learned at a very young age that they were to be Nazis and support Hitler.

Hitler had shown unwillingness to tolerate the Jews and once he was appointed Chancellor, he started to take elimination measures like deportation, forced emigration, and isolation to enforce his belief. He took advantage of Germany’s weakness in World War One, then used it as an opportunity to blame the Jews for Germany’s defeat. Hitler’s political party was the largest political party in Germany thus allowing them to draw very large crowds to gatherings. He had very good oratory speeches with hand gestures that easily manipulated people to adhere to his views. Hitler constantly targeted the Jews because he knew people believed in these speeches. People in Germany were already anti-semitic but Hitler made it worse by constantly consuming them in his speeches. From the way he spoke about the Jews, we could clearly see the possibility of genocide. Hitler wanted Germany to be free of any humans that anyone other than his ideal master race so he personally selected bodyguards to be part of a group called the SS. Hitler was responsible for ordering the SS to carry out the extermination of anyone who did not fit this ideal. The SS handled oppositions using force and as a result of which people were forced to give into the idea of violence. Sometimes people purposely went along with this Holocaust ideal due to the fear of getting killed. These terrors allowed the holocaust occur

Hitler had an insane hatred for the Jews. He felt that the whining Jewish population was what prevented the country of Germany to rising to its former glory. Before coming into power, Hitler wrote a book explaining his hatred and why others should hate as well. The book was not very popular at the time but would later be held as the nazi “bible”.

Many victims of the Holocaust, regardless of race, endured the same unethical punishment for having what the Nazi’s believed to be wrong beliefs. Though Jewish people were the main target by the Nazi’s, groups such as homosexuals, Gypsies, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also targeted. Locations that these people were imprisoned in varied from prisons to killing camps. There were multiple concentration camps, but certain ones had a greater importance due to their location, such as Sachsenhausen and Dachau, which were both located in Germany, which was where Hitler wished to rid the Jews from. Many prisoners of these concentration camps suffered the same fate, but it is important to know as many of their stories as possible. Karl-Heinz Kusserow, a Jehovah’s Witness during the Holocaust, faced imprisonment for refusing German authorities, faced hardships of the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, and was released from Dachau in 1945.

With the Great Depression of 1929, followed by the rise of the far right-wing party led by Adolf Hitler, the Golden Age was slipping away. Although many of the major cities embraced this liberal change, much of the rest of the country held its traditional homophobic views, despising how the country had changed. So when Hitler came in to power he had a great deal of support from the German people. A lot people at the time believed homosexuality was a sickness that could be cured, so the significance of the Nazi's performing these cruel punishments and experiments was very small on the rest of population, as many people believed this was a good thing.

Most Socialist leaders were Jews so he felt that the two had something to do with each other, which made him dislike both the Jews and Socialists. In May 1919, the German Army overthrew the Socialist Republic. Hitler being one of the people fighting, was arrested, held and accused of being a Socialist. To prove that he was not a Socialist, he agreed that he would help find Socialist soldiers to be executed. Through this experience he became a Political Officer. For this position, his main duty was to educate and lecture the soldiers on current politics. Hitler had a very large audience of people listening to him which was something completely new for him. Based on Hitler’s public speaking talent, he was asked to join a party called the German Worker’s Party by Anton Drexler. This party had Anti-Semitic views and a strong sense of German Nationalism which made it easy for Hitler to fall into the group. Shortly after joining the group, Hitler was named as the Propaganda Manager. Many people joined the group as a result of hearing Hitler’s public speeches. The GWP was later nicknamed the Nazi Party. When this nickname took place, Hitler became the new leader. Hitler took both the Nazi Party and Germany to many new levels. He became a dictator soon after gaining control of the Nazi Party. Just as before, he targeted the Jewish community. Hitler was the main person in charge of the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, millions of Jewish people were

<br>By the summer of 1923, the Nazi party had grown to 150,000 members. Hitler knew this was the right time to take over the government. On November 11,1923, Hitler and his 3,000 men marched to Berlin in an attempt to take it over. The German police were waiting. This was also part of the Beer hall Putsch. Shooting broke out between the two parties. Sixteen Nazis and three policemen laid dead from this massacre. Hitler was sentenced for high treason for 5 years. While he was in prison he wrote Mein Kamp a book that stated his beliefs, and his plan for Germany in the future. He also talked about the superiority of Germans, the concept of the pure-Aryan. He blamed the Jews for the evils of the world and accused them of corrupting everything of ethical and national value.

The Nazi Party was created in 1919 by Adolf Hitler, Anton Drexler, and Karl Harrer. The three were very upset with the outcome of World War I, how Germany lost and how they were unfairly treated by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler became the public speaker for the party and blamed Jews and Marxists for Germany’s past problems. This is where the hate for the Jews originated within the Nazi Party. Hitler continued giving speeches throughout the early 1920’s and was put in prison for an attempt at sparking a revolution to overthrow the government. While in prison, Adolf Hitler wrote his famous book “Mein Kampf”. After completing his sentence in

Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in jail. While Hitler was in jail he wrote the Mein Kamph which means "My Struggle." The book revealed his beliefs and ideas for Germany's government and his plans on taking over Europe. He believed that Germans were superior humanity and Hitler wanted to keep Germany "pure." He said Jews and Slavs were the evils of the world. In December 1924, Hitler was released after serving only nine months.