Brief Look at the Holocaust
Brief Look at the HolocaustNearly six million Jews were killed and murdered in what
historians have called "The Holocaust." The word 'holocaust' is a
conflagration, a great raging fire that consumes in it's path all that
lives. In the years between 1933 and 1945, the Jews of Europe were
marked for total annihilation. Moreover, anti-Semitism was given legal
sanction. It was directed by Adolf Hitler and managed by Heinne
Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. There were many other
great crimes and murders, such as the killing of the Armenians by the
Turks, but the Holocaust stood out as the "only sysmatic and organized
effort by a modern government to destroy a whole race of people." The
Germans under Adolf Hitler believed that the Jews were the cause of
all the German troubles and were a threat to the German and Christian
values.
Dating back to the first century A.D. the Jews and Christians
were always at war. The Jews were considered the murderers of Christ
and were therefor denounced from society, rejected by the
Conservatives and were not allowed to live in rural areas. As a
result, the Jews began living in the cities and supported the
liberals. This made the Germans see the Jews as the symbol of all
they feared.
Following the defeat of the Germans in WW1, the Treaty Of
Versailles and the UN resolutions against Germany raised many
militaristic voices and formed extreme nationalism. Hitler took
advantage of the situation and rose to power in 1933 on a promise to
destroy the Treaty Of Versailles that stripped Germany off land.
Hitler organized the Gestapo as the only executive branch and secret
terror organization of the Nazi police system. In 1935, he made the
Nuremberg Laws that forbid Germans to marry Jews or commerce with
them. Hitler thought that the Jews were a nationless parasite and were
directly related to the Treaty Of Versailles. When Hitler began his
move to conquer Europe, he promised that no person of Jewish
background would survive.
Before the start of the second world war, the Jews of Germany
were excluded from public life, forbidden to have sexual relations
with non-Jews, boycotted, beaten but allowed to emigrate. When the war
was officially declared, emigration ended and 'the final solution to
the Jewish problem' came. When Germany took over Poland, the Polish
and German Jews were forced into overcrowded Ghettos and employed as
slave labour. The Jewish property was seized. Disease and starvation...
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