The event of Holocaust - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages The researcher states that when one examines the history of the 20th century, many human sufferings and even massacres and large-scale cold-blooded executions come into mind but the most outstanding of them all is the holocaust. The holocaust was the massive destruction or the genocide of about 6 million European Jews and other ethnic minorities during the World War II giving a total of approximately 10 million deaths. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government targeted ethnic minorities residing in Europe and this included the Jews, the Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, the Sinti and the Polish. They also extended their hatred to homosexuals, political and religious opponents, Jehovah’s witnesses and the disabled regardless of whether they were of foreign or German ethnic origin. Of all these groups of people, the Jews were the main target and they comprised almost half the numbers killed. Out of the nine million Jews who lived in Europe at that time, approximately six million of them died inclusive of close to 1 million children. The holocaust was a state-sponsored murder propagated by the Nazi government and it basically involved the killing of the various target groups. The event took place in the Nazi-occupied territory. This persecution and removal of German Jews begun almost immediately the Nazis came to power. This was in January 1933. The holocaust killings were driven by the idology that represented Nazi’s illusion that there was an international Jewish conspiracy to rule and control the world. This made this event such a large scale event in the history of man in that the murders were conducted in almost territories of Nazi which represent 35 separate European countries. Four main distinctive features about the genocide are institutional collaboration, scale and ideology, use of extermination camps and medical experiments. The genocide was carried out in stages starting from 30th January 1933 to 8th May 8, 1945 and the killings were conducted through various ways. Concntration camps were set up for confining the Jews. The Jews who were forcefully being moved from their homes were put together in these camps. The inmates were then used as slaves until they died of exhaustion. In these camps, they received no medical attention and some of them died of disease. Initially, these camps were to act as temporary residence for Jews awaiting relocation to areas outside Europe including former colonial powers and Africa. In some places like Poland, they were places for containing the Jews so that they could give labour force to the German war industry. Despite this, the Germans had a plan of eliminating the Jews finally and so the camps were set near railroads. Here, thousands died from disease, starvation, maltreatment and starvation. There is therefore no doubt that forced labour was an extermination tool. A model of destruction through work. Since the emergence of Third Reich, the concentration camps turned into incineration places or extermination camps. The Third Reich required the Romani and the Jews to be assembled and confined in overcrowded ghettos awaiting from where they were transported by cargo or freight train to extermination camps. These journeys were horrific and many of the died on the way. Many of those who survived the journey were systematically murdered in gas chambers. These camps were equipped with several gas chambers for conducting mass extermination and this is one unique feature of the holocaust. By 1942, 6 large extermination camps had been set up in the Nazi-occupied Poland and as many as 15,000 camps and sub-camps in the Germany occupied nations. Another group of Jews and ...Download file to see next pagesRead More