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Of all the examples of injustice against humanity in history, the
Jewish Holocaust has to be one of the most prominent. In the period of
1933 to 1945, the Nazis waged a vicious war against Jews and other
"lesser races". This war came to a head with the "Final Solution" in
1938. One of the end results of the Final Solution was the horrible
concentration and death camps of Germany, Poland, and other parts of
Nazi-controlled Europe. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, people
around the world were shocked by final tallies of human losses, and the
people responsible were punished for their inhuman acts. The Holocaust
was a dark time in the history of the 20th century. One can trace the
beginnings of the Holocaust as far back as 1933, when the Nazi party of
Germany, lead by Adolf Hitler, came to power. Hitler's anti-Jew
campaign began soon afterward, with the "Nuremberg Laws", which defined
the meaning of being Jewish based on ancestry. These laws also forced
segregation between Jews and the rest of the public. It was only a dim
indication of what the future held for European Jews.
Anti-Jewish aggression continued for years after the passing of the
Nuremberg Laws. One of these was the "Aryanization" of Jewish property
and business. Jews were progressively forced out of the economy of
Germany, their assets turned over to the government and the German
public. Other forms of degradation were pogroms, or organized
demonstrations against Jews. The first, and most infamous, of these
pogroms was Krystallnacht, or "The night of broken glass". This pogrom
was prompted by the assassination of Ernst von Rath, a German diplomat,
by Herschel Grymozpan in Paris on November 7th, 1938. Two days later,
an act of retaliation was organized by Joseph Gobbels to attack Jews in
Germany. On the nights of November 9th and 10th, over 7,000 Jewish
businesses were destroyed, 175 synagogues demolished, nearly 100 Jews
had been killed, and thousands more had been injured, all for the
assassination of one official by a Jew ("Holocaust, the." Microsoft
Encarta 96). In many ways, this was the first major act of violence to
Jews made by the Nazis. Their intentions were now clear. The Nazi's
plans for the Jews of Europe were outlined in the "Final Solution to
the Jewish question" in 1938. In a meeting of some of Hitler's top
officials, the idea of the complete annihilation of Jews in Europe was
hatched. By the time the meeting was over, the Final Solution had been
created. The plans included in the Final Solution included the
deportation, exploitation, and eventual extermination of European Jews.
In September 1939, Germany invaded western Poland. Most, if not all
Jews in German-occupied lands were rounded up and taken to ghettos or
concentration camps. The ghettos were located inside cities, and were a
sort of city/prison to segregate Jews from the rest of the public.
Conditions in the ghettos included overcrowding, lack of food, and lack
of sanitation, as well as brutality by Nazi guards. Quality of life in
a ghetto was probably not much above that in a concentration camp. In
June 1941, Germany continued it's invasion of Europe by attacking and
capturing some of the western U.S.S.R. By this time, most of the Jews
in Europe now lived in lands controlled by Nazi Germany. The SS
deployed 3000 death squads, or "Einstagruppen", to dispatch Jews in
large numbers ("Holocaust, the." Microsoft Encarta 1996). In September
1941, all Jews were forced to wear yellow Stars of David on their arms
or coats. A Jew could be killed with little repercussions for not
displaying the Star of David in public. Some of the first Jewish
resistance to the Final Solution came in 1943, when the process of
deportation to concentration and death camps was in full swing. The
Warsaw ghetto in Poland, once numbering over 365,000, had been reduced
to only 65,000 by the continuing removal of Jews to camps in other
lands ("Holocaust, the." Microsoft Encarta 1996). When the Nazis came
to round up the remaining inhabitants of the ghetto, they were met with
resistance from the small force of armed Jews. The revolt lasted for
almost three weeks before being subdued.
Between the years of 1941 to 1945, the main destination for Jews to
be transported was a concentration camp or death camp somewhere in
Poland or Germany. In these camps, innocent Jews, along with Gypsies,
Slavs, Jehova's Witnesses, Communists, and P.O.W.s, were brutally
beaten and abused, fed meager rations of poor food, worked to death, or
simply shot. The first of these camps were established in the mid 1930s
and were originally designed for prisoners. But, numbers of
concentration and death camps grew steadily for years until nearing the
end of the World War II. Quality of life in a concentration camp was
substandard, to say the absolute least. Jews and other deportees were
transported via railroad boxcars similar to those used for cattle. Some
of these cars were so crowded that people actually died standing up,
there being no place for them to fall. Once at the camps, the prisoners
were unloaded and stripped of everything of value. Clothing, jewelry,
eyeglasses, shoes, and even gold teeth were confiscated from the
arriving captives. After unloading, the people were separated into two
groups. One of these groups would be lead to firing squads or, in some
camps, gas chambers, to be dispatched as soon as possible. These people
were usually women, children, and the elderly. The second group would
be lead to the barracks or used for slave labor. This group was usually
comprised of able-bodied men. The prisoners were given little food and
forced to live and sleep in filthy, overcrowded bunks where disease ran
rampant. Thousands of prisoners in concentration camps died simply of
exposure, starvation, or disease. As the war progressed, more and more
concentration camps were transformed into extermination or death camps,
some of which were equipped with gas vans or gas chambers and
crematoria for quick and easy extermination and disposal of the bodies
of the captives. Some of these camps also had facilities for scientific
research, where men like Josef Mengle, also known as "The Angel of
Death", preformed barbaric medical experiments on twins, dwarves, and
other genetically different subjects in hopes of advancing and breeding
the so-called "Aryan" race of perfect Germans for Hitler. Some of the
most notorious of the death camps were located in Poland. Some of these
include Auschwitz (1 million Jews killed), Treblinka (700,000-800,000
Jews gassed), Belzec (600,000 Jews gassed), and Sobibor (250,000 Jews
gassed). These camps were the major centers for the slaughter of Jews
and other groups (The Holocaust: An Historical Summary. Article on the
Internet).
In 1945, the great World War in Europe came to an end, with the Axis
powers surrendering before the Allied invasion of Europe. When the
concentration camps were liberated and the body counts tallied, the
resulting numbers appalled people the world over. Millions of people
lay dead, and dozens of top Nazis faced punishment for unspeakable war
crimes. When the allied powers liberated the concentration camps in
Germany, Poland, and other areas of Europe, what they found there was
beyond belief. Piles of bodies lay rotting in pits and sheds. The
gaunt, sickly prisoners wandered about, barely alive after the ordeal
they had faced. Some of the camps had few prisoners remaining, the
majority of the others led on a final death march to Germany
("Concentration Camps." Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia 1996). Those
who remained at the camps were rescued and taken to hospitals or to
shelters to recuperate from their terrifying experience at the hands of
the Nazis. All told, the toll that the Holocaust took on the people of
Europe, especially Jews, was staggering. By the time it was all over,
an estimated 12 million people lay dead, nearly 6 million of which were
Jews ("Jewish Holocaust." Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia 1996). It
is believed that 3 million of these Jews died in concentration and
death camps, such as Auschwitz, alone ("Holocaust, the." Microsoft
Encarta 1996). An additional 1.5 million died by the bullets of the
mobile death squads, and over 600,000 died in the ghettos of the cities
("Holocaust, the." Microsoft Encarta 1996). I find it incredible that
such a loss of human life could have occurred in a period of just 12
years. For the vicious atrocities carried out by some of the top men in
Hitler's Nazi regime, dozens were killed or imprisoned. In the trials
at Nuremberg, Germany in 1946-47, a multinational allied commission
called 22 of Hitler's highest ranking Nazis. The end result of these
trials were eleven men being sentenced to hang, one of which committed
suicide in his cell, seven men were imprisoned for life, and only three
were acquitted of the crimes they were accused with. Other trials were
held in subsequent years that successfully convicted hundreds of Nazis
for atrocities carried out in wartime.
The Holocaust is one of the most famous events in modern history.
The senseless slaughter of millions upon millions of innocent people at
the hands of Nazi butchers was incited when a man by the name of Adolf
Hitler came to power in 1933. The Nazis wrought terrible death and
destruction on Europe in the following years, beginning with
Aryanization and ending with the Final Solution in a maniacal plot to
exterminate and purify the human race. The Holocaust should be
remembered by all as a dark point in modern history.
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