H. Henry Sianson said that he, “...lived like a normal German… Conservative Jew… observed Jewish laws…”. Margaret Lambert said, “... never made a difference if you were a Jew or a non-Jew.” These quotes elaborate on the fact that Jews were quite normal citizens before 1933, before the reign of the Nazis. Drawing a conclusion, from quotes said by the survivors, some may assume that Holocaust appeared with the reign of Adolf Hitler, without any real preparation. However, those people are completely wrong, as the Holocaust ( or ‘Shoah’ in Hebrew) could never have happened without preparation of antisemitism, or prejudice or discrimination of Jews, over one thousand years.
Preparing for a genocide against Jews dates back to 1 A.D., known to Christians
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Naturally, people looked for a scapegoat for this event. With antisemitism still rising, it was unquestionable for people to make Jews the scapegoat. Theories were created such as “The Jews poisoned the wells, creating the Black Death”. Due to these often believed ‘truths’, Jews in Europe were often murdered, expelled from communities, or were forced to convert to Christianity. The rulers at this time, the Caesars and other emperors, ruled over Europe. In return, citizens were required to worship these emperors as their god. Jews only believed that there was only one God and worshiped him. Therefore, Jews were under heavy antisemitism under the Romans and were persecuted during the Middle …show more content…
Twenty years later after the end of the Holocaust, St. John XXIII, (former pope),realized he needed to end antisemitic thinking. He released Nostre Aetate in 1965 declaring that “Jews were not responsible for Jesus’ death”.Most importantly, Sister Rose Thering realized that to end antisemitic ways, Catholic textbooks needed to change their language about Jews. She successfully edited Catholic textbooks during Vatican II. In 1979, St. (former pope) John Paul the II became the first pope to ever visit a concentration camp, where he visited Auschwitz, praying for the Jewish people there. Even today, 2016, there is antisemitism with the battle over the Holy Land of
January of 1933 the Nazis came to rule of Germany. Nazis believed that Germans were racially superior and seen Jews as a threat to their German racial community. Due to this reason, the Nazis created the Holocaust. The Holocaust is known as a time in history when Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazis and his collaborators killed to about six million Jews, through Genocide, Ethnic cleansing, deportation, and mass murder. But the point of this story is to tell the story of a young woman who I had the privilege to meet by the name of Anna Seelfreud Grosz who survived this tragic time in history.
The Holocaust was an extraordinary event that affected the lives of millions of people, including Elie Wiesel, and led to the death of many innocent lives. It all began when Adolf Hitler became Germany’s dictator in 1933. Hitler praised the German population and seemed to ban all other competing races, specifically the Jewish population in Germany. This hatred toward the Jews led to extreme discrimination. Hitler’s main goal was to lead the Jewish race out of the country through the establishment of harsh laws against them (Barrett). After having little effect, Hitler decided to force the Jews into political imprisonment which led to the creation of the first concentration camps in 1933. However,
Adolf Hitler came into power of Germany in 1934. Wanting power, land and revenge, Hitler gets troops ready to attack. Hitler was a troop in WWI for Germany. Once the Germans lost the war, Hitler took that personally, and wanted revenge. After coming into power with his army of Nazis, Hitler is quick to blame Jewish people for all the harsh debt and corruption in Germany. The Germans believe him, causing them to hate Jewish people. The holocaust happened throughout 1933-1945, it ended when Hitler killed himself.
Most can agree that one of the biggest catastrophes in the world. Though no one bothers to ask who was responsible. The most common response is that Hitler was the perpetrator, which is true to a degree but the responsibility isn't his and only his. There were many chances for people to help Jewish people in their time of need but nothing was done. It’s easy to say that measures should have been taken to protects the Jews though when it came to act on them many were bystanders. Many of these bystanders unfortunately included Americans, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish people themselves and lastly the Germans.
To understand the Holocaust you need to understand six words, definition, expropriation, einsatzgruppen, concentration, deportation, and death camps. The Germans define the Jews biologically based on religion of their grandparents. When the regime came to power in January 1933 part of the Nazi movement wanted to out rid or Jews overnight, what they did was they began to legislate against the Jews and rapidly the Jews were kick out not only in civil service but also in education, universities, teachers lawyers and doctors. The Jews became something that was not needed. The climax of this early period of legislation was the Nuremberg laws. The laws were there to determine officially citizenship in Germany, however the only definition that were given who is a citizen were definition for who was not a citizen and the only people define as not citizen of Germany were the Jews. In other time in history Jews could convert, they could hide themselves by assimilating within the host country. However under racial theory during the Nazi period Jews were Jews because of the blood that was coursing thought their veins. So the ultimate theory was that if you wanted to get rids of Jews that you couldn’t do it through conversion or any other way then to murder them.
Before the nineteenth century anti-Semitism was largely religious, based on the belief that the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. It was expressed later in the Middle Ages by persecutions and expulsions, economic restrictions and personal restrictions. After Jewish emancipation during the enlightenment, or later, religious anti-Semitism was slowly replaced in the nineteenth century by racial prejudice, stemming from the idea of Jews as a distinct race. In Germany theories of Aryan racial superiority and charges of Jewish domination in the economy and politics in addition with other anti-Jewish propaganda led to the rise of anti-Semitism. This growth in anti-Semitic belief led to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and eventual extermination of nearly six million Jews in the holocaust of World War II.
When the blame for the Holocaust is brought to mind, many immediately think to blame the Nazis, and only the Nazis. This is not the case, however. The Holocaust was a lesson to humanity, of utmost importance. Only blaming the Nazis for the atrocities is excluding an exceptionally important part of this lesson, which is unacceptable. In Elie Wiesel's book, Night, it is evident that blame be passed to Yahweh, the Jewish people themselves, and the non Jewish Europeans.
Jews have been persecuted throughout all of history. A deep seated hatred has existed in many nations against them. Throughout history Jews could not find a resting place for long before they are thrown out of over 80 countries including England, France, Austria and Germany (Ungurean, 2015). Deicide is one of the reasons why Jews are hated. It is said that Jews are the responsible party for the killing of Jesus. The gospels describe Jews delivering Jesus to Roman authorities while demanding that he be crucified and his blood be on their children (Schiffman, n.d.). As a result Jews are held accountable for the death of Jesus and they are hated by many.
Violence against the Jews had begun to decrease by the 1500s, unfortunately though Jews still continued to endure persecution (Medieval anti-Semitism). “Jews still occasionally served as scapegoats, footing the blame for any problem or adversity” (Medieval anti-Semitism). The Jews were accused of many things. They were held accountable for being the ones responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, killing Christian children, causing natural catastrophes and were even accused of being the cause of the Plague that broke out in Europe in 1348 (“The Roots of the Holocaust”). 19th Century By the 19th century, legal reforms and emancipation improved the rights and status of Jews in many parts of Europe (19th century anti-Semitism).
The Holocaust ended 70 years ago, it involved over 11 million deaths. Hitler blamed all Jews for everything wrong with Germany. The Holocaust was the mass murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis. They were taken to concentration camps where they were treated like animals. Before the concentration camps, their human rights were taken, and also making them wear gold stars to identify the Jews better and faster. The Jews were taken from camp to camp until they finally arrived to the deadliest camp of them all, Auschwitz. The Holocaust also lasted 12 years from January of 1933 to May 8 of 1945. It all started when Adolf Hitler came into power. The Holocaust should never be forgotten because first of all, there were too many deaths. Second, because they were innocent people who
A holocaust is defined as a disaster that results with the tremendous loss of human life. History, however, generally identifies the Holocaust to be the series of events that occurred in the years before and during World War II. The Holocaust started in 1933 with the persecuting and terrorizing of Jews by the Nazi Party, and ended in 1945 with the murder of millions of helpless Jews by the Nazi war-machine. "The Holocaust has become a symbol of brutality and of one people's inhumanity to another." (Resnick p. 11)
Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and his sudden control over Germany sparked a new age of reform within the new “Nazi-state” (Hunt 848). As Nazism became a major aspect of everyday life in Germany, Hitler plotted against his enemies and those he blamed for Germany’s defeat in World War I: the Jewish race. In his biography, Mein Kampf, Hitler discusses the artistic, social, and technological superiority of Germany (“Aryans”), why he believes the Aryans are the ultimate dominant human race, and he makes many anti-Semitic remarks against the Jews. (Lualdi 224). In 1935, the “Nuremberg Laws” were enacted to deny Jewish Germans of their citizenship; this ultimately led Hitler to carry out his “Final Solution,” in which he hoped to fully exterminate the Jewish race from all of Europe (Hunt 864). After gathering the Jews from their “ghettos” and forcing them into concentration camps all across Europe, Hitler and his Nazi advocates began one of the most destructive and horrifying genocides in history, known today as the Holocaust. Only after being introduced to the conditions of these concentration camps, the hatred and abuse put towards the Jewish, and the gruesome lifestyle they were trapped into living can one understand why the Holocaust affected so many as it did. What exactly were the conditions of these camps, and how did a few lucky survivors prevail while their friends and families perished?
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.
The Holocaust could be best described as the widespread genocide of over eleven million Jews and other undesirables throughout Europe from 1933 to 1945. It all began when Adolf Hitler, Germany's newest leader, enforced the Nuremburg Race Laws. These laws discriminated against Jews and other undesirables and segregated them from the rest of the population. As things grew worse, Jews were forced to wear the Star of David on their clothing. The laws even stripped them of their citizenship.
Approximately 6 million Jews and 5 million other people starting from the year 1933 were killed. They were put to death. There was one main person responsible for all of this.