The Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust has been called one of the cruelest and tragic events ever to take place in history. It was an act of racism against the Jewish community lead by Adolf Hitler from January 30, 1933, until May 8, 1945. Hitler was appointed as Chancellor of Germany and was convinced that the Jews were responsible for humiliating Germany by defeating them in World War I., As a result, Hitler wanted the Germans to reign supreme over all races, especially the Jewish, and to do so he had to orchestrate a genocide. The Holocaust ended with roughly six million people being murdered as a result of them being Jewish, or because they were affiliated with Jewish people. The most notorious political figure that comes up when speaking about all of the events that took place during the Holocaust is Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was the man behind the sudden attack on the Jewish community because of his displeasure with the ending results of World War I. He felt like the Treaty of Versailles embarrassed the Germans, so he wanted to annihilate those very people, the Jewish. The overarching historical question, ‘how did it happen?’ may be simple, but the answer is extraordinarily complex, with social, political, cultural, and psychological dimensions.  A secondary, but no less important question is how the Nazi genocide is relatable to other such atrocities, a contextual issue to be addressed by students through this paper basing the p‌‌‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‍‌‌‌‍‍‍‌‌aper on the book ‘Why the Germans? Why the Jews? By Götz Aly.

It is worth noting that up to date, there still exist nations that do practice racial discrimination in the name of maintaining their specific identity. The truth of the matter remains that, due to racism, there has been a gap created between the victims of racism and the oppressors. Taking someone to be different from others due to racial difference raises the question of how the situation can be mended. The oppressors equip themselves with various strategies to get rid of the so-called ‘outcasts,’ thereby acting as enough warning to the rest of the people intending to pay visits to such a place. Germany and Jews community for a long time has been into a war that has resulted in violence and oppression as opposed to reconciliation aspect. Germany’s view on Nazism, identity, and nationalism would not match with Jewish Zionism, Holocaust, and identity. However, the analysis of the history of Jewish and Germany enmity is bound to shed light on the subject.

The First World War triggered the need for the European nations, more specifically Germany, to develop the tendency of expansion and consolidation. They believed that achieving such a goal would require them to eradicate the inner resistance to ensure full control and sovereignty of their country. This step implied that in the long run, enemies were to be branded, and the victims were to be identified. Germany’s state’s mechanism of identifying the actual natives was effortless. Those who belonged to the state were absorbed through the use of force and willingness of the members. The rest of the people who differed from the state were quickly eliminated irrespective of their willingness to join the state. This move gave birth to the enemies and friends, thus initiating division in the country. The Jewish community was the minority, and due to that fact, it was exposed as the non-patriot society. The religious and ethnic perspective of the Jewish community became the order of the day, thereby terming it distinct from the German way of life.

The German state extended its might and willingness to keep off the Jews community by issuing to the army orders to demolish and kills this minority group. This brought a lot of controversy due to the fact some of the Jews people had already intermarried with the German natives. To add more pain to the situation, there the already put in place curfew to let go the Jews were no longer to be revised, thereby becoming hard for the intermarriages to thrive. Following the period of the Holocaust, the Jewry community became frustrated all over the world, but nothing could be done to mend the issue. The Israel community and the Jews in the United States of America felt that their Zionism had been abused though they remained calm for the time being due to the hatred of Nazi leadership led by Adolf Hitler. The only solution to the problem of mass murder of the Jews by the German empire was to emigrate hence opting to become internally displaced persons in other safer lands. Most of them sought to settle in the United States, but the worst part of it is that the United States government blocked them from entering the land since they would bring unnecessary pressure on the land. The US federal government used the notion that if the victims of war are let in, they will mobilize their counterparts to cause havoc in the name of revenge.

During the start of 1933, there had been about 522000 Jews who were defined in terms of religion. This number was increasing, possibly because of the births of Jews while still in the German land. Therefore, by the count, it was evident that most of the people making up the population were the youth and young children. About 304000 Jews found their way out of the German land following the massive dictatorship of the Nazis. This means that for the first six years of the dictatorship, the thing became worse as discrimination escalated to another higher level. The exiting of the Jews implied that only 214000 of them were left behind in the hands of the inhuman Hitler.

By 1939, the Nazi leadership had already brought radicalization in terms of communal, economic, and social change to the Jewish society residing in Germany. The Nazi power had taken several new strides that prevented the Jewry from enjoying the available resources. For instance, they were expelled from undertaking commercial and professional activities, thereby weakening them more. The Nazi Dictatorship took most of the Jews as the laborers in the farms where physical torture was massive. It is estimated that most of the German Jews died while at the places of work of their oppressors. Others were forced into the building and construction of roads and in the quarrying sector. At the start of 1939, only a small proportion of about 16 percent of the Jews had secured any steady employment in the German land. Loss of autonomy was aggravated by the increased arrest of the Jews during the night of the broken glass and concentrated in camps.

World War 2 was the gateway to the many drastic changes that took place for the German Jewish society. The newly revived Reich organization of Jews led by Leo Baeck worked hard to ensure that emigration was supported in favor of Jewish schools and other groups that were at the forefront of ensuring Jews were not discriminated against. After the start of the Second World War, the German government imposed rules that restricted the Jews from visiting and entering some German cities. Having found that such a curfew was not enough, the government went on and introduced a food rationing program to the Jews so that they would be pushed further to the point of weakness in an attempt to keep them off from the Germany nation. The decree dictated that the Jews would not visit various food stores, implying that there was a possibility that they were ascertained to die of hunger, which was highly striking them. The German government also became anxious about the notion that the Jews would, in the future, retaliate because they could easily access the electronic devices and other important communication appliances.

Consequently, it became important that all the Jews were demanded to submit their appliances to the government failure to which serious punishments would follow specific individuals. The degree extended its might by forcing all the Jew above six years of age to wear a yellow Jewish star on the outer part of their garments. In short, the Jewish community was forced to concentrated Jewish houses from which the labor force was sought.

In 1943, the German authority formulated another major decree that allowed the national army to exercise the deportation activity of other Germans. It did not matter if they were of German or non-German ethnicity, anybody could become a victim if they went against Hitler, or were from the Jewish community. When captured, the Jewish community and others were sent to concentration camps to perform slave labor and were tortured until they die from exhaustion or starvation. For those people that were strong enough to survive those horrible conditions, they were murdered in gas chambers and mass shootings in what is called genocide. Genocide is defined as the deliberate murder of a large group of people, especially those of a particular race or ethnicity. The fear and paranoia that the Jewish community possessed was documented and can be read in the journal of a little girl named Anne Frank. July 6, 1942, fourteen-year-old Anne Frank and her immediate family, and two other families the van Pels, and Pfeffer’s had to hide in the attic of her father, Otto Frank’s office building. Employees of Otto Franks brought the families food, water, and anything else that they needed even though it was very risky for them to do so. Hitler was instructed that if he and the Nazi organization caught anybody hiding any Jewish people, they would be sentenced to the death penalty because it was against the law to do so.

The Holocaust was and is still known as one of the biggest acts of racism ever to take place in the history of the world. The Holocaust is an event that started all because of the humiliation that Germany possessed after losing in World War I to the Jewish community, and after it was over, it resulted in World War II sort of like a domino effect. The Holocaust was morally and ethically wrong, and people should remember the suffering that the Jewish community went through just because they were born of a particular ethnicity. Racism is still prevalent in today’s society and should not be taken lightly. Nobody should be treated maliciously because of what they were born into, and no human should take another human’s life because they do not like that race. We all reserve the right to be treated equally without any stereotypes or prejudices.