As the Allies fought their way across Europe, they discovered the concentration and death camps. The conditions in the camps had always been terrible. However, by late 1944 and early 1945 the whole camp system was collapsing. The prisoners in the East were subjected to the death marches at the height of winter. The transportation to camps in Germany and Austria led to terrible overcrowding, resulting in many thousands of deaths.
The Holocaust was one of the worst events to ever happen to mankind. It was started by the Fuhrer of Germany, Adolf Hitler, who thought that the Aryan race was superior to every other race. He had a massive hatred for the Jewish race and decided to try and exterminate every living Jewish person. He killed around two-thirds of all the European Jews (Byers 10). World War II was going on at the same time as the Holocaust.
Third, wherever Germany in Eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen were created to murder Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Finally, Jews and Romani were ordered to be live in overcrowded ghettos, there they were then transported by freight train to extermination camps. Extermination camps were camps that were built by Nazi Germany, during the World War II, that were designed to kill millions of people by gassing and extreme work under terrible living conditions. The Nazis were not alone in this effort. Parish churches and the Interior Ministry supported the genocide by presenting birth records showing who was Jewish; the Post Office delivered the deportation and denaturalization orders; the Finance Ministry took away Jewish property; German businesses fired Jewish workers and took away stock that belonged to the Jews.
In the beginning of the Holocaust, many people were sent to labor camps but died of infections or from working so much. There were about six large concentration camps that were used to kill the Jews upon entry into the camp. The Jews that weren’t immediately sent to concentration camps lived in Ghettos until they were sent to the extermination camps. Living in ghettos was terrible, considering the size of the area was condensed and many families had to live in one house together. Gas chambers were invented as a way to kill Jews and others quickly.
Bobby Mckenney December 15, 2011 How the Holocaust affected Europe It was one of the most horrible and tragic situation that has ever occurred. So many lives were taken and wasted by heartless cold blooded killers. The Holocaust was a sad and horrific event that took the lives of over six million Jewish people, including children. All the people involved in this tragedy were under the influence of a man named Adolf Hitler, who fooled and mislead German citizens to follow him in killing all the Jewish people to make Germany be wealthy and powerful. Germany was so poor they believed anything.
The Ukraine Famine The Ukrainian Famine was dreadful event, led by Joseph Stalin, where millions of people starved to death in only two years. Stalin used this man made famine as a means to undermine the nationalistic pride of the Ukrainian people. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide, 4/18/2012. Any genocide in history is important because a lot of people died in cruel and unusual ways and it’s wrong.
Some of the most well-known are Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Chelmno, Buchenwald, Neuengamme and Majdanek. Jews, other racial minorities and people who were considered enemies of Hitler’s regime were deported to these camps and forced to work in horrendous living conditions. Thousands of inmates died of starvation, overwork, exposure to the elements, epidemics and disease. Those who were unfit for labour including women, children, the elderly and the sick were immediately gassed and their bodies either cremated or dumped into mass
Both of these acts of inhumanity were committed not only at Auschwitz but at every death camp established during the Holocaust. Edward Bond a playwright that lived through WW2 says that, “Humanity's become a product and when humanity is a product, you get Auschwitz” (BrainyQuote 1). This means that when humanity becomes a privilege to some and not a natural right to all then things like Auschwitz and in turn the Holocaust happen. The Holocaust death camps were considered both mentally and physically inhumane; the total effect of them shows the true level of inhumanity they installed. The death camps were mentally inhumane on the prisoners; especially during the first few days because most inmates had some to all of their family taken away and killed.
The most notorious example of dehumanization of civilians has to be the killing of Jews in World War Two. Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis for the simple reason that they were Jewish. They were shipped to concentration camps in cattle cars where they were subjected to slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. There were numerous examples of dehumanization in the concentration camps. In memoirs of survivors, we learned that they were separated from their families, stripped of their possessions, clothing and cut off their hair.
At the center of his vision was the brutal elimination of the Jewish people from the face of the earth. To get rid of his "enemies," he set up dozens of prison camps -- called concentration camps -- across Europe. Jewish women, men and children from almost every country on the continent were deported; they were torn from their homes and sent to the camps, where they endured terrible suffering. Many people died of hunger and disease. Most were murdered.