THE HOLOCAUST

http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-holocaust

11-10-17

The word “Holocaust,” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned), was
historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has
taken on a new and horrible meaning: the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews (as
well as members of some other persecuted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals) by the
German Nazi regime during the Second World War. To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf
Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After
years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final
solution”–now known as the Holocaust–came to fruition under the cover of world war, with
mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland.
BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST: HISTORICAL ANTI-SEMITISM & HITLER’S RISE TO
POWER

Anti-Semitism in Europe did not begin with Adolf Hitler. Though use of the term itself dates
only to the 1870s, there is evidence of hostility toward Jews long before the Holocaust–even as
far back as the ancient world, when Roman authorities destroyed the Jewish temple in
Jerusalem and forced Jews to leave Palestine. The Enlightenment, during the 17th and 18th
centuries, emphasized religious toleration, and in the 19th century Napoleon and other European
rulers enacted legislation that ended long-standing restrictions on Jews. Anti-Semitic feeling
endured, however, in many cases taking on a racial character rather than a religious one.

Did You Know?

Even in the early 21st century, the legacy of the Holocaust endures. Swiss government
and banking institutions have in recent years acknowledged their complicity with the
Nazis and established funds to aid Holocaust survivors and other victims of human
rights abuses, genocide or other catastrophes.

The roots of Hitler’s particularly virulent brand of anti-Semitism are unclear. Born in Austria in
1889, he served in the German army during World War I. Like many anti-Semites in Germany,
he blamed the Jews for the country’s defeat in 1918. Soon after the war ended, Hitler joined the
National German Workers’ Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party
(NSDAP), known to English speakers as the Nazis. While imprisoned for treason for his role in
the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hitler wrote the memoir and propaganda tract “Mein
Kampf” (My Struggle), in which he predicted a general European war that would result in “the
extermination of the Jewish race in Germany.” Hitler was obsessed with the idea of the
superiority of the “pure” German race, which he called “Aryan,” and with the need for
“Lebensraum,” or living space, for that race to expand. In the decade after he was released from
prison, Hitler took advantage of the weakness of his rivals to enhance his party’s status and rise
from obscurity to power. On January 20, 1933, he was named chancellor of Germany. After
President Paul von Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Hitler anointed himself as “Fuhrer,” becoming
Germany’s supreme ruler.

NAZI REVOLUTION IN GERMANY, 1933-1939

The twin goals of racial purity and spatial expansion were the core of Hitler’s worldview, and
from 1933 onward they would combine to form the driving force behind his foreign and
domestic policy. At first, the Nazis reserved their harshest persecution for political opponents
such as Communists or Social Democrats. The first official concentration camp opened
at Dachau (near Munich) in March 1933, and many of the first prisoners sent there were
Communists. Like the network of concentration camps that followed, becoming the killing
grounds of the Holocaust, Dachau was under the control of Heinrich Himmler, head of the elite
Nazi guard, the Schutzstaffel (SS), and later chief of the German police. By July 1933, German
concentration camps (Konzentrationslager in German, or KZ) held some 27,000 people in
“protective custody.” Huge Nazi rallies and symbolic acts such as the public burning of books
by Jews, Communists, liberals and foreigners helped drive home the desired message of party
strength.

In 1933, Jews in Germany numbered around 525,000, or only 1 percent of the total German
population. During the next six years, Nazis undertook an “Aryanization” of Germany,
dismissing non-Aryans from civil service, liquidating Jewish-owned businesses and stripping
Jewish lawyers and doctors of their clients. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, anyone with
three or four Jewish grandparents was considered a Jew, while those with two Jewish
grandparents were designated Mischlinge (half-breeds). Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews
became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution. This culminated in Kristallnacht, or
the “night of broken glass” in November 1938, when German synagogues were burned and
windows in Jewish shops were smashed; some 100 Jews were killed and thousands more
arrested. From 1933 to 1939, hundreds of thousands of Jews who were able to leave Germany
did, while those who remained lived in a constant state of uncertainty and fear.

BEGINNING OF WAR , 1939-1940

In September 1939, the German army occupied the western half of Poland. German police soon
forced tens of thousands of Polish Jews from their homes and into ghettoes, giving their
confiscated properties to ethnic Germans (non-Jews outside Germany who identified as
German), Germans from the Reich or Polish gentiles. Surrounded by high walls and barbed
wire, the Jewish ghettoes in Poland functioned like captive city-states, governed by Jewish
Councils. In addition to widespread unemployment, poverty and hunger, overpopulation made
the ghettoes breeding grounds for disease such as typhus.

Meanwhile, beginning in the fall of 1939, Nazi officials selected around 70,000 Germans
institutionalized for mental illness or disabilities to be gassed to death in the so-called
Euthanasia Program. After prominent German religious leaders protested, Hitler put an end to
the program in August 1941, though killings of the disabled continued in secrecy, and by 1945
some 275,000 people deemed handicapped from all over Europe had been killed. In hindsight, it
seems clear that the Euthanasia Program functioned as a pilot for the Holocaust.

TOWARDS THE “FINAL SOLUTION” , 1940-1941

Throughout the spring and summer of 1940, the German army expanded Hitler’s empire in
Europe, conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.
Beginning in 1941, Jews from all over the continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of
European Gypsies, were transported to the Polish ghettoes. The German invasion of the Soviet
Union in June 1941 marked a new level of brutality in warfare. Mobile killing units called
Einsatzgruppen would murder more than 500,000 Soviet Jews and others (usually by shooting)
over the course of the German occupation.

A memorandum dated July 31, 1941, from Hitler’s top commander Hermann Goering to
Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (the security service of the SS), referred to the need for an
Endlösung (final solution) to “the Jewish question.” Beginning in September 1941, every person
designated as a Jew in German-held territory was marked with a yellow star, making them open
targets. Tens of thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-
occupied cities in the USSR. Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been
ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz, near Krakow. That August, 500 officials
gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with the pesticide Zyklon-B. The SS soon placed a huge
order for the gas with a German pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the
comingHolocaust.

HOLOCAUST DEATH CAMPS, 1941-1945

Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the
concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful: the sick, old and
weak and the very young. The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on
March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland,
including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-
controlled territory as well as those countries allied with Germany. The heaviest deportations
took place during the summer and fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported
from the Warsaw ghetto alone.

Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this
virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied
governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to
publicize news of the mass slaughter. This lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied
focus on winning the war at hand, but was also a result of the general incomprehension with
which news of the Holocaust was met and the denial and disbelief that such atrocities could be
occurring on such a scale. At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a
process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-
Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of
others died of starvation or disease. During the summer of 1944, even as the events of D-
Day (June 6, 1944) and a Soviet offensive the same month spelled the beginning of the end for
Germany in the war, a large proportion of Hungary’s Jewish population was deported to
Auschwitz, and as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day.
NAZI RULE COMES TO AN END, AS HOLOCAUST CONTINUES TO CLAIM LIVES,
1945

By the spring of 1945, German leadership was dissolving amid internal dissent, with Goering
and Himmler both seeking to distance themselves from Hitler and take power. In his last will
and political testament, dictated in a German bunker that April 29, Hitler blamed the war on
“International Jewry and its helpers” and urged the German leaders and people to follow “the
strict observance of the racial laws and with merciless resistance against the universal poisoners
of all peoples”–the Jews. The following day, he committed suicide. Germany’s formal surrender
in World War II came barely a week later, on May 8, 1945.

German forces had begun evacuating many of the death camps in the fall of 1944, sending
inmates under guard to march further from the advancing enemy’s front line. These so-called
“death marches” continued all the way up to the German surrender, resulting in the deaths of
some 250,000 to 375,000 people. In his classic book “Survival in Auschwitz,” the Italian Jewish
author Primo Levi described his own state of mind, as well as that of his fellow inmates in
Auschwitz on the day before Soviet troops arrived at the camp in January 1945: “We lay in a
world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around and inside us.
The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to
conclusion by the Germans in defeat.”

AFTERMATH & LASTING IMPACT OF THE HOLOCAUST

The wounds of the Holocaust–known in Hebrew as Shoah, or catastrophe–were slow to heal.

Survivors of the camps found it nearly impossible to return home, as in many cases they had
lost their families and been denounced by their non-Jewish neighbors. As a result, the late 1940s
saw an unprecedented number of refugees, POWs and other displaced populations moving
across Europe. In an effort to punish the villains of the Holocaust, the Allies held
the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, which brought Nazi atrocities to horrifying light. Increasing
pressure on the Allied powers to create a homeland for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust would
lead to a mandate for the creation of Israel in 1948.

Over the decades that followed, ordinary Germans struggled with the Holocaust’s bitter legacy,
as survivors and the families of victims sought restitution of wealth and property confiscated
during the Nazi years. Beginning in 1953, the German government made payments to individual
Jews and to the Jewish people as a way of acknowledging the German people’s responsibility
for the crimes committed in their name.

The Jewish Holocaust

by UHRC on 22/12/10 at 8:15 pm
United Human Rights Commision
By Nora Injeyan

The history of anti-semitism in Europe stretches back far before the Holocaust and took on three
forms. The original roots of this hatred is religion-based. Early Christian writings charge Jews
with the crime of deicide, ignoring the facts that the Gospels were written over 60 years after the
fact and by men who wanted to gain favor with the Romans, consequently blaming the Jews for
the killing of the Christian messiah. The second form, taking place during the Middle Ages,
grew in its oppression by actively seeking conversion of the Jews. Adding to the accusation of
deicide came the charge of Blood Libel, a widespread belief that Jews killed Gentile children and
used their blood for Matsuh. However, during this time, conversion was an “acceptable escape”
from Jewry. It was not until the late nineteenth century where the third stage, racial anti-
semitism, began to develop. Following the popular concept of social-darwinism, the Jews began
to be looked at not as followers of a religion but as an inferior race. Moreover, whereas during
the Middle Ages the Jew was seen as pathetic but not a source of fear, beginning in the late
nineteenth century, the Jew was seen as a threat which needed to be eradicated. This fear only
further developed during World War I where the Jews were conveniently blamed for Germany’s
war-time losses. Adding to this was post-war inflation which wiped out the middle class who
had their money in savings, leaving those who sold products, many being Jewish, less affected.
This financial gap only exacerbated the situation for the Jews of the Weimar Republic.
The fact that there was already a clear feeling of anti-semitism in Germany and Europe allowed
for a man like Adolf Hitler to manipulate this hate to his benefit. Like the Young-Turk idea of
Pan-Turanism, Turkey for the Turks, Hitler adhered to the idea of Lebensraum, living space for
Aryans. This living space, in his eyes, was polluted by the genetically unfit, namely Jews,
Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally deficient. With his election in 1933, anti-semitism
officially found its way into German politics. This began first with legal attacks on Jewry such
as the Nuremberg Laws that officially defined who was a Jew, and in doing so gave rise to a
bureaucracy that began searching into family histories. This legal attack on Jews took a sharp
turn on the November 9, 1938, by a move known as Krystallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass.”
This was not only the first openly violent attack on German Jewry but there was no punishment
or repercussion by the German government for those who took part in the assault.
The Holocaust had premeditated systems of isolation and destruction. As mentioned before
however, Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust. The Nazis put into place the T-4
program, a policy of euthanasia which sought out the “genetically unfit.” The first target of this
program was disabled children. Because “racial purity” was a cornerstone to Nazi ideology, it
became normal to eliminate genetic disease through sterilization and other means. There was
also a ghetto structure which allowed the Germans to confiscate Jewish property while they were
relocated, isolate the Jews from the general population, use them as forced labor and ultimately,
the ghetto system was used as propaganda to confirm the Nazi image of the Jews. Because so
many were forced to live in such small, confined areas, the living conditions inevitably became
unsanitary and disgusting, a situation the Nazis used to illustrate their stereotypes of the “filthy
Jew.” There was also an extensive concentration camp system in place. All concentration
camps were built near railroads in order to facilitate convenient transportion of the victims.
Although there were over 10,000 camps, only six were death camps, many were either transit or
labor camps. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest, although two separate camps, they were very
close to one another and one-sixth of all Jews brought were killed. This camp also engaged in
brutal medical experiments in Block 11 by Dr. Joseph Mengele who was most interested in
experimenting with twins where he subjected them to extreme temperatures or injected dye into
their eyes to change the color.
Although the circumstances were bleak in the camps, it should be noted that there were instances
of armed resistances in the ghettos. The most notable example is that of the Warsaw ghetto. A
unique characteristic of this uprising was that the intent was not to free the ghetto or to escape
death. Those involved in the uprising knew their resistance was futile but did so only for the
sake of fighting back. It was an acknowledged fact that the members of the ghetto were fated for
death yet they staged one of the most successful uprisings for no other reason than to fight back.
Other revolts include the Treblinka camp revolt, the Sobibor revolt and the Auschwitz-Birkenau
Sondercommando revolt.
As with other genocides there are still pseudo-academics and academic organizations which
proliferate genocide denial
The history of anti-semitism in Europe stretches back far before the Holocaust and took on three
forms. The original roots of this hatred is religion-based. Early Christian writings charge Jews
with the crime of deicide, ignoring the facts that the Gospels were written over 60 years after the
fact and by men who wanted to gain favor with the Romans, consequently blaming the Jews for
the killing of the Christian messiah. The second form, taking place during the Middle Ages,
grew in its oppression by actively seeking conversion of the Jews. Adding to the accusation of
deicide came the charge of Blood Libel, a widespread belief that Jews killed Gentile children and
used their blood for Matsuh. However, during this time, conversion was an “acceptable escape”
from Jewry. It was not until the late nineteenth century where the third stage, racial anti-
semitism, began to develop. Following the popular concept of social-darwinism, the Jews began
to be looked at not as followers of a religion but as an inferior race. Moreover, whereas during
the Middle Ages the Jew was seen as pathetic but not a source of fear, beginning in the late
nineteenth century, the Jew was seen as a threat which needed to be eradicated. This fear only
further developed during World War I where the Jews were conveniently blamed for Germany’s
war-time losses. Adding to this was post-war inflation which wiped out the middle class who
had their money in savings, leaving those who sold products, many being Jewish, less affected.
This financial gap only exacerbated the situation for the Jews of the Weimar Republic.
The fact that there was already a clear feeling of anti-semitism in Germany and Europe allowed
for a man like Adolf Hitler to manipulate this hate to his benefit. Like the Young-Turk idea of
Pan-Turanism, Turkey for the Turks, Hitler adhered to the idea of Lebensraum, living space for
Aryans. This living space, in his eyes, was polluted by the genetically unfit, namely Jews,
Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally deficient. With his election in 1933, anti-semitism
officially found its way into German politics. This began first with legal attacks on Jewry such
as the Nuremberg Laws that officially defined who was a Jew, and in doing so gave rise to a
bureaucracy that began searching into family histories. This legal attack on Jews took a sharp
turn on the November 9, 1938, by a move known as Krystallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass.”
This was not only the first openly violent attack on German Jewry but there was no punishment
or repercussion by the German government for those who took part in the assault.
The Holocaust had premeditated systems of isolation and destruction. As mentioned before
however, Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust. The Nazis put into place the T-4
program, a policy of euthanasia which sought out the “genetically unfit.” The first target of this
program was disabled children. Because “racial purity” was a cornerstone to Nazi ideology, it
became normal to eliminate genetic disease through sterilization and other means. There was
also a ghetto structure which allowed the Germans to confiscate Jewish property while they were
relocated, isolate the Jews from the general population, use them as forced labor and ultimately,
the ghetto system was used as propaganda to confirm the Nazi image of the Jews. Because so
many were forced to live in such small, confined areas, the living conditions inevitably became
unsanitary and disgusting, a situation the Nazis used to illustrate their stereotypes of the “filthy
Jew.” There was also an extensive concentration camp system in place. All concentration
camps were built near railroads in order to facilitate convenient transportion of the victims.
Although there were over 10,000 camps, only six were death camps, many were either transit or
labor camps. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest, although two separate camps, they were very
close to one another and one-sixth of all Jews brought were killed. This camp also engaged in
brutal medical experiments in Block 11 by Dr. Joseph Mengele who was most interested in
experimenting with twins where he subjected them to extreme temperatures or injected dye into
their eyes to change the color.
Although the circumstances were bleak in the camps, it should be noted that there were instances
of armed resistances in the ghettos. The most notable example is that of the Warsaw ghetto. A
unique characteristic of this uprising was that the intent was not to free the ghetto or to escape
death. Those involved in the uprising knew their resistance was futile but did so only for the
sake of fighting back. It was an acknowledged fact that the members of the ghetto were fated for
death yet they staged one of the most successful uprisings for no other reason then to fight back.
Other revolts include the Treblinka camp revolt, the Sobibor revolt and the Auschwitz-Birkenau
Sondercommando revolt.
As with other genocides there are still pseudo-academics and academic organizations which
proliferate genocide denial

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/holocaust-violation-of-human-rights

Holocaust: Violation Of Human Rights

Multiple human rights were violated in the making of Elie Wiesel's famous book that retells his
horrifying story.
Shawnna Davis
Shawnna Davis

Over six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. In order for such a large amount of
civilian deaths to occur, human rights had to be violated as well. Human rights are a right that
belongs justifiably to all people no matter where they are. The Holocaust was the systematic
persecution of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, handicapped and blacks. The Holocaust violated
human rights by stripping people of everything they had a right to and refusing to treat them
humanely.
In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, "Night," many human rights are obviously violated, but I’m going to
focus on two of the major rights that are violated: the right to no unfair detainment and the
right to a fair and free world are violated.
The right to no unfair detainment is important because it helps to ensure people are not falsely
confined for no appropriate reason. Wiesel and his family, along with other Jewish families from
their area, were evicted from their homes and forced into a ghetto they could not leave. Wiesel
was forced to sacrifice his home and obey the will of the police or face the consequences. The
police kept tight account of all the Jews, counting them and making sure no one left or escaped.
“One by one the houses emptied, and the street was filled with people and bundles. By ten
o’clock, all the condemned were outside, the police took a roll call, once, twice, twenty
times” — (Wiesel 10)
Every Jew from Wiesel’s neighborhood was forced into a ghetto with no say or choice. No one is
authorized to dictate someone’s freedom in such a way unless given fair justification to do so.
That was one of his first warning signs, before he was forced into trains with no means of escape
as Wiesel and his family are sent to Auschwitz, where the majority would later die horrible
deaths. The entire situation is preplanned and constructed in order to strip them of their rights
without them even realizing it before it is already too late.
Fear began to rise after being locked in crowded train cars as does the fearful threat of being
killed if someone even attempted to escape.
“Then the cars were sealed. In each car one person was placed in charge. If anyone escaped
he would be shot” — (Wiesel 14)
They are detained against their will; subjugated with the possibility of being shot and murdered.
There is no validation for the inhumane treatment they suffered. The Jews are eventually cut-off
from the rest of society. By keeping them isolated from everyone else, the Nazis are able to
alienate them, causing them to feel different as they are increasingly dehumanized. After
undergoing the harsh conditions of the camps, the Jews became weakened both mentally and
physically, leaving them in a much more feeble state. The Holocaust thus violated their human
rights through unfair treatment and torture.