Why was the world silent during the Holocaust?

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

After the holocaust, the world was shocked with what had happened. They saw evidence of it all. The world didn’t think much of it when it was going on. They thought if they weren’t a Jew then they were fine whatever happened to the Jews was their own problem. The more the world seen

This can be shown using the diary of a young girl named Anne Frank who went into hiding with the intention of hiding out the war. She wrote “We’re afraid that when the Germans retreat, they’ll take the entire population with them” (Frank, ___). This demonstrates that the main reason behind silence is fear. Fear, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “to be afraid or apprehensive” (Merriam-Webster). This is acceptable within this time period, there was fear ringing through every possible corner of the countries involved, fear of captivity, fear of dying, fear of disease, and numerous other factors. Combined, you may see a whole population who remains silent and anxious of what may occur in the future, scared to say anything or commit actions that may be considered inappropriate to the Nazis. Although these horrible measures were taken during this war, there was a yet a group of defiant heros who spoke for what they believed is true and spoke with the intention of liberation and freedom for all, no matter color, race, ethnicity, or religion and these people are the reason the world is as it is

On November 25, 1942, approximately three years after Hitler started World War II The New York Times ran their first report that the Nazis had created a policy to eradicate the Jews of Europe. This story, confirmed by the State Department, did not run on the front page. It appeared on page 10 (Ostrow). President Franklin Roosevelt could have made this a major issue, but he said and did nothing. Other popular magazines such as Time, Life, and Newsweek reported virtually nothing on this topic (Ostrow). The people of the United States preferred not to know. If the United States had not practiced an isolationist foreign policy rooted in anti-Semitism, the Holocaust death toll could have been reduced because the killing would have been limited.

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

While some managed to escape and go into hiding, others were captured and sent to labor camps. While a large quantity of Jews were killed upon arrival, others were evaluated and sent to work. The Jews were starved, beaten, or killed and set on fire to make space for more Jews. All of their valuables had been taken away from them for the Nazi’s greed. They were put in blue striped Joseph Mandrowitz spoke of his journey while travelling to Auschwitz,

At the “Wannsee Conference”, which took place in Berlin, on January 20, 1942 the German regime with its main protagonists Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler planned the ‘final solution of the Jewish question. Even if massacres of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution, with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population, extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. The scene where a train of Schindler’s workers was wrongly sent to Auschwitz shows such an extermination camp were the Nazis systematically gassed thousands of Jews. Another example for the organized genocide is the mass cremation after the mass execution during the eviction of the ghetto in Krakow.

The United States’ response to the Holocaust is a much-discussed and very sensitive subject for a variety of groups close to or related to the situation. The opinions on the subject are diverse and far-reaching, and the analyzations and comparison of some of these can lead to a greater understanding of not only the happenings of the Holocaust itself but also the social reactions to the event by the many groups involved. Four sources I intend to compare include Martin Gilbert’s Auschwitz and the Allies, David Wyman’s The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945, W.D. Rubinstein’s The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved the Jews from the Nazis, and Peter Novick’s The Holocaust in American Life, because I believe that these four sources make up a diverse and widespread selection from which nearly all opinions, or the most conflicting ones, can be observed and interpreted. The first work uses an investigatory style that proposes pieces of evidence from the period shortly before the Holocaust that could have allowed the allies further and more prudent action. Similarly, the second work argues that there is substantial evidence that the United States and the rest of the allies could certainly have saved thousands of lives with earlier and more aggressive action, but argues from a more opinion and theoretical style that focuses less on

The Holocaust was an event that Hitler a German leader placed upon his own country. Hitler placed knowledge on many believing that he was one of germany's best leaders in the textual it states some reasons about how Hitler became a german leader and how it effected Germany, “Germany has been struggling since 1918, When it was defeated in World War I. The German people felt humiliated, tired, and bitter. Hitler and his Nazi party rose to power by tapping into these feelings. Hitler declared that Germans were superior to everyone else. He also offered up scapegoat for all of Germany’s problems….” also found, “Hitler’s influence spread”. The Holocaust started because of why they hated the Jews is because of Hitler and how he acted towards the Jews because of the race he thought they were when they were just a religion.

A common misconception about the Holocaust is that the world was naïve of the atrocities happening under the Nazi’s rule. The horrors of the Holocaust were not left undocumented. Unfortunately, many saw these malicious acts as insignificant to the global population; people only start sympathizing when the hindrance affects them. Hitler, with the help of his many allies, achieved to murder millions of innocent men, women, and children. After spending this semester studying the Holocaust, I have realized that the Nazis’ greatest ally was neither an individual nor a country; Hitler’s greatest ally was indifference.

When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, he immediately began enforcing an authoritative state. An authoritative state is a state favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom. Hitler started a world war to achieve his dream of world domination. The war left behind an estimated 72 million dead, among them 47 million civilians, of whom some six million were Jewish. Jews were the targets of the Holocaust because Hitler hated Jews and blamed them for all of the problems in the world. Throughout the years of the Holocaust, this is seen in many ways, starting from the Nazis having book burnings to get rid of un-German writings proclaiming the death of Jewish intellectualism all the way to the extremity of the mass murder of Jews. This process progressed rapidly, and it had lasting effects for the entire world.

Approximately 12,000 Jews were killed each day (“The Holocaust”). Many of which who were unemployed, lived in poverty, and starved (“The Holocaust”). Adolf Hitler invaded the western half of Poland and sent everyone to concentration camps such as Dachau, Auschwitz, and many more (“The Holocaust”). Adolf’s plan was to discard all of the Jews (“The Holocaust”). He had them gassed, dying of starvation and diseases, hung, and shot (“The Holocaust”). Concentration camps were evacuated in 1944 (“The Holocaust”). The Holocaust resulted in World War II and Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945 (“The

No one really knows for sure why exactly the people let these horrendous crimes go on for as long as they did, but a few speculations have been made. As said above, with Hitler using propaganda to influence the people negatively, hatred grew towards the Jews and many people turned a blind eye to the murders happening in their own towns. The laws being passed prohibited average citizens to help the Jews. From separating their restaurants, schools, and even towns, the Jews never stood a chance. Luckily, some Germans and Polish people could not look away, and would hide the Jews in their homes, stores, and attics, bringing them provisions and other necessary items to survive. The most famous example of this happening is written in the diary of a young girl named Anne Franke. She and her family lived in the attic of her father’s workplace for more than two years, quietly trying to live in a small, cramped space until they were caught and taken to concentration

Hitler and the Nazis implemented the “Final Solution” starting in 1940 and went all the way through to the end of the war in 1945 (“The Holocaust”). Millions of people’s lives were lost in the one year that the “Final Solution” commenced. Furthermore, the camps were not liberated until Soviet troops marched through German occupied Poland; giving the Nazis time to evacuate the camps (“Auschwitz). France and Britain have been allies with the United States since World War I; both countries declared war before the “Final Solution” was undergoing its terrible impact on the world. The United States could have saved millions of lives by joining in with our allies and could have possibly reduced the number of people murdered by the “Final Solution” and Hitler's desire for purity. Second, back in the United States, word has gotten around about the Holocaust, and the millions of people who were dying under Nazi influence. During the war, the United States were not focused on saving the people, but on winning the war. During very late 1941-1945 the United States should have shifted half of their focus from winning the war to helping the people in the camps (“The Holocaust”).

Most people didn't know what was going on, and people didn't really know where Jews and gypsies etc. were going, all they knew was that they were being removed. When word and photographs got out into the public view about what happened in these camps, everyone is shocked to see so many dead bodies. With the role of media, the international response to the war crimes in the Holocaust was to establish an international tribunal and it was agreed to punish those responsible of crimes.