The Holocaust - Research Paper Example

The Holocaust Overview The Holocaust, which took place between the s of January 30, 1930 and May 8, 1945, was the infamous, funded genocide of approximately six million Jews in Europe during World War II by Nazi Germany (Gilbert, 1987). It is also regarded as one of the biggest examples of racism and prejudice that the world has seen. Though the Holocaust is most commonly connected with the murders of millions of Jews, many people have insisted that the horrific event include others that were ostracized and murdered by the Nazis during that time, which would bring the total number of deaths between eleven and seventeen million. The Holocaust began with the simple idea that some people were better than others, and that the rest hardly deserved to share the same air of which to breathe. Anti-semitism in Germany, along with racial supremacy, provided the foundation for the Holocaust. Once Nazis came to power, they began to strip Jews of their rights. The persecution and genocide of Jews were carried out in stages, the majority of which took place prior to the onset of World War II. Laws were put into place to disallow Jews from participating in activities and simple everyday events that others were entitled to. The concentration camps that had been created prior to the Jews losing their rights became mandatory as the years dragged on, until a Jewish person was either dead or in a concentration camp, having been marked for later death. Between the years of 1935 and 1941, the horror that Jews, as well as many others, faced increased dramatically. From having their rights taken from them, and being either murdered or forced into concentration camps, the tragedies that people were subjected to exploded into an all-out war in 1939. Any person who was not considered “perfect” by Nazi standard was met with a fate that would shake up the world for decades to come, bringing about further examples of prejudice belief. Hitler and the Nazis Adolf Hitler was the man behind the devastation of the Holocaust. It was Hitler that believed that the Jews were the reason that Germany experienced the problems that it did. On this mindset, Hitler began to convince others that the Jews were to blame, as well as others that did not meet the “blonde-haired, blue-eyed Christian” standards that Hitler established. Deciding to do something about the problems befalling Germany, Hitler slowly but surely stripped Jews of their rights. To enforce these new laws, Hitler formed the Nazis, which were his soldiers during his rise to power. With Hitler in the lead, the Nazis would deny Jews their rights, condemn many to concentration camps, or kill those that went against the idea of a perfect Germany. Hitler was driven entirely by racism and prejudice, believing that he was better than others based on how he looked and what he believed in (Wiesel, 1960). Instead of embracing the differences of people, he decided it best that only the “perfect” people should be the only ones to share in the comforts and luxuries that the others were not worthy of. Many hate-crimes came out of Hitler’s reign, forever imprinting this negative idea of perfect and imperfect human beings on the minds of others. Methods of Persecution and Murder The minorities that were subjected to the Holocaust felt it all slowly over time. At first, in 1933, concentration camps were built to hold Jews, though these were a little less than mandatory during their first year of existence. They were used as prisons for Jews that went against the slowly-forming laws against Jews. These concentration camps later became many, and Jews were not presented with the choice of whether or not to enter them - they were taken by force, or they were killed. Prior to being forced into the concentration camps, Jews were denied their rights. They were given stars to be placed on their clothing to allow others to know what they were. There were stars of various colors, each with different meaning, such as whether a person was Jewish or if they were homosexual. These people were given strict times when they could be in public, otherwise they were required to stay within their homes. They were not allowed to run businesses, and many of these were closed down. Children of Jewish heritage were denied things as large as education to smaller things such as riding their bikes, as these were luxuries meant for “people better than them.” It came to a point where Jews were trapped in their homes, save for the few hours that they had to go shopping for food that was specifically being sold for their sakes. When concentration camps became mandatory, Nazis would go door-to-door, collecting and herding people that displayed the stars onto trains to be taken to the camps. If people resisted being taken, they were murdered on the spot. Once these trains arrived at the concentration camps, they were split into two groups: male and female. They were further split up, separating the young from the old and the strong from the weak. Those that remained were people that could be put to work and could be of use to the Nazis; the rest were led to gas chambers, where they would die by the hundreds. Once a person lost their usefulness, or if someone refused to work, they were murdered. While gas chambers were the most common method of murder during the Holocaust, other methods were discovered that could kill hundreds of people in a short amount of time. Some of these methods included death marches and group executions, in which large numbers of people were shot in a fashion similar to a firing range. Other methods, whether or not intentional, were starvation, overworking and abusing those that did not comply with the laws in the concentration camp. In the concentration camps, the greatest cause of death was starvation or freezing. The Victims and the Death Toll As aforementioned, the Holocaust is more commonly connected with the genocide of millions of Jews. However, Jews were not the only people that were subjected to the Holocaust. The Jewish community had been the prime target, but this expanded to include Poles, Yugoslavs, Romanis, and Soviet prisoners of war. Physically disabled, mentally ill, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also among those that were sought out during the Holocaust. Furthermore, those that were against the ethnic and racial cleansing of Germany were targeted, such as communists and socialists, who had been some of the first opponents of Nazism. The total number of deaths will never be known, though it is has been estimated that approximately seventeen million people died during the Holocaust (Grant, 2003). The Jewish population comprised of more than half of the death toll. Homosexuals were estimated to have made up roughly ten thousand deaths. The other minorities do not carry estimates, as there were very few records to keep track of those that had died, as well as how they died, or what they had been punished for. Conclusion After the Holocaust ended, things began to change not only in Europe, but worldwide. People that survived the Holocaust but were left with no home to return to, whether this was due to their towns being destroyed or their entire families being murdered, were put into Displaced person camps for many years after the war ended. Many people also stayed at these camps when they felt too afraid to return to their homes or countries. Anti-semitism was alive and well long after the Holocaust had come to an end, causing many riots to break out in Poland, and many other Jews being killed. Due to the amount of first-hand stories by survivors and the release of almost fifty million pages of Holocaust-related archives in 2006, the Holocaust has become an event that is now known worldwide, being taught to children as young as elementary-aged. These stories and this information has opened up the dark realities behind racism and prejudice, which has helped the world become more tolerant towards others that are different. Though the world still suffers from some levels of racism and hate-crimes, people seldom live in the fear that they did over eighty years ago. Works Cited Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: The History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War. New York: Holt, Henry & Company, Incorporated, 1987. Grant, R. Gordon. Holocaust: In the Name of the Fuehrer. Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing, 2003. Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang Publishing, 1960. Read More