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Research Paper Holocaust Overview

Jessica Jorden

Mr. Neuburger English 102-102 10 October 2012

Jorden 2 The perfect storm was starting to form in Germany. With the country in an economic depression and the right charismatic leader taking power this was the right mixture for horrific events to take place that would be eventually recognized as the Holocaust. A great deal of suffering in only a short amount of time was brought upon a group of people that was truly undeserved. In such a short amount of time over twelve million people were murdered. Remembering what has happened in our past will help our future from repeating the same mistakes. In order to understand this devastating event, one needs to be aware of series of events that allowed this government sponsored genocide beginning with the Nazi party coming to power. Nazis rise to power The year was 1918 when the Treaty of Versailles was signed ending World War I leaving Germany in a depression which resulted in a National Socialist Party to form that would become known as the Nazi Party. The History Place website explains how Adolf Hitler would become the leader of the Nazi party after his attempt to over throw the government known as the Beer Hall Putsch. After being in jail for a year he wrote his most famous book Mein Kampf in which he describes his radical beliefs. In prison Hitler states, "Instead of
Hitler giving a speech in 1936 http://bit.ly/TkxCaR

working to achieve power by an armed coup we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies. If outvoting them takes longer than

Jorden 3 outshooting them, at least the results will be guaranteed by their own Constitution! Any lawful process is slow. But sooner or later we shall have a majority and after that Germany" (qtd. in Rise of Hitler A New Beginning). Hitler never won the election because of his radical views, but since Hindenburg was on his death bed Hitler deceived Hindenburg talking him into appointing Hitler as president (Rise of Hitler- A New Beginning). Just as Hitler said, Germany did fall under his spell. Nuremberg laws

With Adolf Hitler in control of Germany he started to in create laws that would distinguish Jews from the Aryan. These laws are known as the Nuremberg laws. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the question

Student learning about Laws http://bitly.com/TkxCaR

of whether Judaism is a religion or culture arose because even those who did not practice

the religion were prosecuted the same as those who did because of their ancestry, regardless if they converted to Christianity (The Nuremberg Race Laws). Another article The Nuremberg Laws explains how the first law deals with the protection of German blood and honor, which prohibited any mix marriage between German and Jews and also the employment of any working females under the age of forty-five; also all Jews were also stripped of their German citizenship known as the Reich citizenship which also required Jews to carry identification cards (Jewish

Jorden 4 Virtual Library) With life starting to become harder on the Jews nothing could prepare them for the pain and suffering that they were about to endure. Kristallnacht The Jewish Virtual Library explains that when Jews in Poland were being deported to relocation camps this angered a young man, Zindel Grynszpan, living in France when he found out his family was among those who were deported. Wanting to seek revenge Grynszpan made it his mission to assassinate the German Ambassador of France, and unable to succeed in killing the ambassador, Grynszpan settled for an officer by the name of Ernst vom Rath. This gave Joseph Goebbels, chief of propaganda in the Nazi party, the evidence needed to launch a program against the Jews which resulted in Kristallnacht ("Kristallnacht.") In his article Reexamining the Tipping Point, Yael

Synagogue burning the night of Kristallnacht http://bitly.com/TCMXjc

G. Weinstock explains that during Kristallnacht, also known as the

Night of Broken Glass, the Nazis burned more than 1,000 synagogues and destroyed around 7,000 businesses; around 100 Jews were killed, and 30,000 Jews were rounded up and put into concentration camps (Weinstock) Holocaust survivor Judith Becker recalls the night her and her family were escorted by the Gestapo to the jail cell they stayed in before they were sent to Poland. A mother of one of her classmates was not Jewish and an officer gave the mother an option to either stay with her husband or to claim that her husband raped her, so, to save her family, she made the claim and her husband was recognized as a criminal(USCShoah

Jorden 5 Foundation). This is just one example of what times were like at this time. This event was the beginning of the end for many of the Jews marking Kristallnacht the beginning of the Holocaust. Jewish ghettos One Jew described the living conditions in the ghettos as a prison without a ceiling. According to Spartacus, on the edge of cities and towns brick walls aligned with barbed wire and armed Gestapo marked the area of where the Jewish ghettos were located ("Jewish Ghettos."). Living conditions were terrible. The Holocaust Research Project website records that many ghetto dwellers suffered the same fate of starvation, disease, exhaustion, and random shootings. Judith Becker, only being about ten years old when her family was living in the Warsaw ghetto, recalls random shooting of ten people by the Gestapo if anyone would try and escape the ghettos. The ghettos were only a temporary settlement. Action needed to be taken so a conference was held to decide what came next. Wannsee Conference Many Jews were already falling to their deaths due to the horrible living conditions in the ghettos but not quick enough for the Nazi party. Their needed to be a solution to the Jewish question and on the 20th of January 1941 an answer was decided uopn. The article Hitlers Decision to Exterminate European Jews by Christian Gerlach explains the decision to liquidate all European Jews. The conference meeting was between representative from the
Starving children in the Warsaw ghetto http://bit.ly/SO3kJ0

Jorden 6 Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) and state secretaries and other officials from ministerial bureaucracy. The result of the conference led to what is known as the final solution and appointed

The men who attended the Wannsee Conference http://bit.ly/Z9YoDu

Heydrich as the coordinator of the operation (Gerlach). The author quotes Adolf Eichmann who declared, the Wannsee Conference was indeed the beginning of the real extermination story (qtd. on 765). For the first time in our history man created industrial plants for mass murder. There were a total of six extermination camps all located in Poland. The Nazis still need labor workers to work in their concentration camps so many went through a selection process. Selection methods Jack Kagan describes his experience when his family went through the Nazi selection process. Jacks father and uncle have the same profession and same size family and his uncles familys fate was decided by a SS officer when he told them to proceed to the right. Jakes uncle and his family were the unfortunate ones. Jack writes, That means it was no rhyme or reason whom to select to death and whom to life (Kagan).

Trainloads of human cargo arriving at Auschwitz http://bit.ly/RNmIYU

Those who were fortunate enough to go to the concentration camps to work did not mean that

Jorden 7 they escaped death. 15,000 to 20,000 victims a day were falling to their deaths and after the final solution was instated 60,000 were executed daily in creative ways. Extermination methods With their being so many Jews the German Nazis could not just sit up firing squads and execute people all day. Their needed to be a more efficient way to mass murder millions. The article Methods of Mass Murder from the
Gas chamber used during the Holocaust http://bit.ly/UwoNeI

Holocausts-Education website explains how many met the end of

their fate by gassing trucks and extermination camps. Nazi soldiers would force Jews in against their wills and the exhaust from the truck would be set up to run into the van. Driving the Jews to their graves the exhaust would suffocate them killing them by the time they reached their destination. However, this method was not as resourceful as the extermination camps that were set up effectively killing three million. Nazis would force hundreds of people into a gas chamber were they would be gassed by Zyclon B ("Methods of Mass Murder"). Liberation With the allied forces moving in on the German army and camps starting to be liberated is when the true horrors of what the Nazi party were doing were revealed. The USHMM website describes the horrors the Nazi party tried to hide. Regardless of the amount of fires the Nazi party had to try to keep the act of genocide a secret was not enough to hide several thousand

Jorden 8 emaciated prisoners that were discovered along with 14,000 pounds of hair from the dead. Health conditions were a major issue, and camps had to be burned to prevent the spread of epidemics ("Liberation of Nazi Camps."). With nowhere really for all of those who were rescued to go, many were put into displacement camps. The article Displacement Person: Administration explains how many who did survive the Holocaust did not want to return home because the anti-Semitism that spread through Europe. Since many were afraid to return to their lives before the war
Concentration camps being liberated http://bit.ly/UwoWyP

many ended up settling in the United States and Israel ("Displaced Persons: Administration"). In the book The Wisdom of Humankind states, But no such higher blessing can exist anywhere, for the blessing of life that we have been given is the greatest possible blessing (Tolstoy. 173). Judith Becker, the holocaust survivor, never lost herself even though she went through such tragic events. In fact she loves life today and has grown even deeper in her spirituality because of what she has been through. The people that went through the Holocaust had the ultimate test of fate, and many were not as lucky as Judith. It is important to remember significant events in history such as this one in hope that we can evolve and learn to live in harmony.

Jorden 9 Works Cited Gerlach, Christian. "Hitler's Decision to Exterminate European Jews." Journal of Modern History Vol. 70.Issue 4 (1998): 759-58. Print. "The Holocaust: A Learning Site for Students." The Nuremberg Race Laws. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2012. "Kristallnacht." Kristallnacht. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2012. "Liberation of Nazi Camps." Liberation of Nazi Camps. N.p., May-June 2012. Web. 04 Nov. 2012. Noakes, Jeremy, and Geoffrey Pridham. "The Nuremberg Laws." The Nuremberg Laws. Viking Press, 1974. Web. 29 Oct. 2012. Peter Vogelsang, Peter, and Brian B M Larsen. "Methods of Mass Murder." The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. N.p., 2002. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. "Spartacus Educational." Spartacus Educational. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2012. Tolstoy, Leo, and Guy De Mallac. The Wisdom of Humankind. Ada, MI: CoNexus, 1999. Print. USCShoah Foundation. Judith Becker Testimony. YouTube. YouTube, 30 Jan. 2009. Web. Weinstock, Yael G. "The International School for Holocaust Studies." Kristallnacht Pogrom. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2012.

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