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.
Up until the mid 1942’s most Jews were unaware that the Final Solution was being implemented throughout German occupied territory. Before their realization of this, they were stripped weapons and faced starvation. These two things coupled with what the thought that they were being deported to ghettos with food and housing helped them to believe that they didn’t need to take to arms and fight back. Also, the Nazis policy for reprisals worked against their want to fight. For every act of defiance and murder of a Nazi solider, a Jew and his family would be executed, sometimes even whole villages of Jews.
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.
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.
In what ways did the Nazis treatment of Jews change between 1938 and 1945? The Jews were violated throughout the Second World War and the intensity of the violence elevated as the war progressed. In 1938 Kristallnacht took place where German citizens including the SS and the Hitler youth boycotted Jewish shops and businesses due to an assassination of a German politician by a French student . This was persecution of the Jews as many of them were removed from everyday life either by being sent to a concentration camp , 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps on that night, or by having property and businesses vandalised and destroyed which left them with nothing. Also more persecution happened the next day as Jewish communities were asked to pay $1 million marks in reparations to what took place on that night .
“Children mourned as they watched their relatives and neighbors lined up into thee gas chambers, and watching the corpses pile up into a fire fueled by their own fat.” This is the daily life of the prisoners in the death camps during the Holocaust from 1933 – 1945. For the first time in history Jews were singled out for total annihilation. The Nazis used death camps to torture and kill Jews during the Holocaust. Jews suffered greatly in death camps by gas chambers, starvation, and hard labor. Although there seemed like no way out of death camps, a few rebellions took place in some famous death camps.
Research Paper Ethan Do The Nazis disposed of the Jewish people in many atrocious manners as displayed in the personal reflection of Elie Wisel in his book Night. The ways that the Jews were horrifically murdered was the gassing and shooting. However, those were not the only methods of how the Jews died. They died from a lack of malnutrition and other diseases that were caused by the abhorrent surroundings. There were so many crematoriums during World War II that the Nazis had developed.
Jackson J. Spielvogel, author of Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History, says, “About 40% of Europe’s 1 million Gypsies were gassed and burned.” Most people think of the Jews being the only people being wiped out in large numbers, but obviously that was not the case. A camp was opened up in Auschwitz-Birkenau sector Blle know as Zigeunerlager or Gypsy camp. In this gypsy family camp the prisoners were forced to wear black triangles. They were given tattoos that stated with the letter ‘z’ followed by camp numbers. For example ‘z2∙9881’ was someone’s number.
The children and elders were the weakest so they died very easily. Out of the 7,000,000 that died, 3,000,000 were children. At the height of the Famine Ukrainian villagers were dying at the rate of 25,000 per day or 1,000 per hour or 17 per minute. http://www.faminegenocide.com/resources/facts.html, 5/22/2012. The Ukrainians ate anything they could get their hands on.
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.