There have been many major events in the world’s history; some are brilliant discoveries, and some are incredibly tragic. One of the biggest tragedies in the world was The Holocaust which took place in Nazi Germany and other territories Germany took over from 1933-1945. The Holocaust was the result of Hitler’s anti-semitism from his belief that the Jewish people were the cause of all of Germany’s problems.
Hitler made the Jewish people the scapegoat of all of the country’s struggles and with the help of the SS and Nazi army, he was able to almost carry out his “final solution” plan to terminate all the ewish people, resulting in between five million and six million Jews were killed. The Nazi’s thought the Jews were inferior and scapegoated them for their problems and as a result, the Jewish people were sent to concentration camps, persecuted, and murdered. The nazi’s did not like the Jewish people because they believed that they were the root of all of Germany’s problems.
In Germany, Hitler wanted to create the perfect Aryan race. He had a specific way that each person should look in the race but the Jewish people did not look like what he wanted them to look like. Hitler’s Aryan race was supposed to be, “Tall, long legged, slim.. narrow-faced, with a narrow forehead, a narrow high-built nose and a lower jaw and prominent chin, the skin is rosy and bright… the hair is smooth, straight or wavy” (document 3). Hitler wanted to create a unified Germany made up of the best of the German people. This included the aforementioned blonde hair blue eyed slim Aryan race.
Most of the Jewish people at the time, looked different than a stereotypical german person so they were persecuted and treated very harshly for their looks. The Jewish stereotype was urly dark hair and big noses. Furthermore, appearece was one of the ways the Nazi’s would determine who was Jewish and who was not. Since the Nazi’s blamed the Jew’s for their problems, they were treated very harshly if they were confirmed/suspected to be a Jewish person. Another way that the Nazi’s took down the Jewish people was by boycotting their businesses. One of the main ways to hurt the economy of someone is to stop their flow of income.
The Nazi’s wanted to make the Jewish people more poor and easier to wipe out so they boycotted their companies and stores. The Jewish tereotype included a power and money hungry person and that they would do anything for more money. The Nazi’s knew the steriotype and acted upon it by spray painting “Jude” meaning Jew on the store windows so then everyone would know to boycott the store so the power hungry jews wouldn’t make more money. This made it so the Jewish people were not making enough money to keep their property and buy enough food. Furthermore, the Nazi’s made laws to protect themselves and hurt jewish people.
The Germans did not care if Jewish people were killed when they burned synagogues, but, they ook extra precautions to ensure their own safety. For example, one of the measures to be taken against the Jew’s, was that “only such measures should be taken which do not jeopardize German Life or property. ” (document 1) This was written by SS- Gruppenfuhrer Heydrich to the poliece men and field officers in 1938. Because the Jewish people were so inferior to the Germans, it did not matter if all of their belonging were burned, just as long as the German buildings were ok.
The Nazi’s really despised the Jewish people and tried to make their lives iserable just because they were viewed as different and inferior. Because of the horrible stereotypes the Nazi’s had towards the Jewish people, they treated them so poorly that over 6 million Jewish people died. In Germany and German territories, the Nazi’s established concentration camps which were built against the Jewish knowledge to kill off all the Jewish people solving the “Jew problem” in Germany. In the concentration camps, the Jewish people were treated very poorly.
Their food supply was extremely limited, they were killed and tortured and forced to work excruciating hours everyday. Before the concentration camps, Hitler put into place the first stage of his “final plan” to get rid of all the Jewish people. He took all the Jews out of their homes and land and moved them to ghettos where they would all live until they were sent to a concentration camp to be killed. In the ghettos, the conditions of living were very poor. For example, the people living in the ghettos were “forced to live on 180 grams of bread a dar, 220 grams of sugar a month, 1 kg of jam and 1kg of honey, etc. Furthermore, the Jews were forced to live off of only “10 percent f the normal requirements. ” (Document 2). The Jewish people in the ghettos were given such a minimal amount of food, that a majority of them lost 30+ pounds in the first couple months of living there. The Nazi’s figured that if they limit their food supply, it would prevent a resistance because no one would be strong enough to fight. The Nazi’s also figured that if lots of Jewish people died from lack of food, then it was less people to take to concentration camps to be shot or gassed.
After the ghettos, the Jewish people were moved to the concentration camps in order o finish out hitler’s “final plan” of termination of all the Jews. In the concentration camps, the people were forced to do manual labor unless they were a child, mother, or grandparent and they were immediately sent to a gas chamber to be killed. The gas chambers were built with “shower heads” on the walls to trick the people into thinking they were going to shower but were really going to be killed. When the Jews were gassed, “about thirty two forty women were gassed in one gas chamber… and] about ten minutes later the thirty to forty women were ead. ” (Document 4).
The gas chambers were located at the concentration camps to mass kill a lot of Jewish people. Since women couldn’t do as much manual labor as men, they were usually some of the first to be killed. In the gas chambers, the Nazi’s would let out the gas, which was created by a Jew, to kill all of the people quickly and then bury the bodies or burn them. The experience of the Jews under the Nazi’s was horiffic and tragic. The Nazi’s belief that the Jews were inferior and their need for a scapegoat for all of Germany’s problems caused the
Nazis to send the Jewish people to concentration camps, persecuted and murdered. The jewish people were thought of as greedy and flawed compared to the Germans. Furthermore, the Nazi’s did whatever they could to ensure the end of the Jewish race though gas chambers and horrible living conditions in both the ghettos and concentration camps. In the world today, the group named ISIS is driving people out of their homes in Iraq and killing them. Like in the holocaust, ISIS is persecuting and murdering people who are different in beliefs from Islam like the christian people in the Arab world.
