The Holocaust: The Tragic History Of A Genocide

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| The Holocaust | The Tragic History of a Genocide | The Holocaust Final Draft The holocaust was an act of genocide carried out by Nazi Germany that took the lives of more than 6 million Jews (Sheehan 4). The exact number of victims is unknown but most of them died between 1939 and 1945, during World War II. What makes the holocaust different from other acts of genocide is not the number of people who died, nor the act itself, but the manner in which it was conceived and carried out (Sheehan 4). It was carried out in a planned and organized way. It was aimed at the total extermination of an entire race of people. Discrimination of the Jews did not begin with Hitler. Its roots go back to almost 2,000 years to the time when the…show more content…
The subjects of Josef Mengele's research were better fed and housed than ordinary prisoners and were, for the time being, safe from the gas chambers, although many experiments resulted in more painful deaths. "Patients" were put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs, castrated, frozen to death, and exposed to various other traumas. So called camp doctors, especially the notorious Josef Mengele, would torture Jewish children, Gypsy children, and many others (http://www.auschwitz.dk). He was particularly obsessed with twins and inherited characteristics. Sometimes, parents gave up their twins hoping they might be saved; unaware of what was planned for them. He gained the children’s trust by giving them candy and often playing with them. Some of them actually called him, “Uncle Mengele” (www.ushmm.org). At Auschwitz, Mengele did a number of twin studies, and these twins were usually murdered after the experiment was over and their bodies dissected (www.auschwitz.dk). According to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died during the Holocaust will never be known (www.ushmm.org). Some estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children who were murdered under Nazi rule in Germany and occupied Europe
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