Argumentative Essay: The True Meaning Of The Holocaust

If an entire race of people were removed from the face of the earth, what would the world look like without that people group? The word Holocaust comes from two Greek words that mean “whole” and “burned,” but Holocaust has a deeper and much more painful meaning today. Today, it is a word associated with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime’s persecution of millions of Jews in Europe. Hitler wrongly believed the Jews were the cause of Germany losing World War One (WWI) and he began his rise to power to punish Jews through segregation, forced labor, torture and the use of concentration camps to carelessly kill over six million Jewish men, women and children from 1933 to 1945 in order to create a superior Aryan race. The Holocaust showed how evil

Jews had lived in Germany for generations, and they were fully integrated into the German culture. When World War One ended in 1918, Germany was facing an economic depression. The government officials of the German Worker’s Party, which would later become the Nazi Party or Third Reich, believed the loss of the war and their economic troubles was the Jews fault. Many Germans disliked Jews, and Hitler would use their hatred towards Jews to help gain a position of power to remove Jews from Germany. His resentment towards Jews had grown for over fifteen years. He had fought for Germany during World War One and was very disappointed that Germany was not victorious. He believed in the Dolchstosslegende or “stab-in-the-back-legend,” that the Jewish population had somehow betrayed Germany in the closing days of the war (Saunders, ch. 4). There were many German citizens who shared this same belief, and support for the Nazi Party grew. Germans were ready for a new leader to bring about a change in their economic conditions, and Hitler used this new wave of momentum to his advantage. In 1933, Hitler had risen to political importance within the Nazi Party. According to United States Holocaust Memorial