During the Holocaust the mass murder of jews was a worldwide tragedy and when a tragedy happens usually your first question is why? The two groups of devoted researchers for the Holocaust are split into the Intentionalist group and the Functionalist group. As said by Mimi-Cecilia Pascoe in Intentionalism and Functionalism: Explaining the Holocaust “The intentionalist position suffers greatly from a lack of adequate evidence, and consequently cannot prove Hitler’s intentions beyond reasonable doubt. On the other hand, the functionalist position is better able to compensate for the lack of evidence, and thus provides a more solid historical explanation for the Holocaust (Pascoe 1).” The on going argument of whether the Holocaust was intentional or a choice in the moment is the Intentionalist vs. Functionalist case and either side has many different ways of portraying their evidence on the topic; the arguments are both have convincing arguments but in …show more content…
The functionalist argument just doesn’t make sense to me nor many other researchers in the holocaust such as a lecturist Elly Dlin (Dlin 2). How could you set up hundreds of functioning concentration camps, deport all jews with their consent, and end up killing thousands of the jews without planning it out. The functionalists present a confused picture of the inner workings of the Third Reich. “Far from it being seen as a well-oiled hierarchy in which authority flowed downwards and obedience flowed upwards, the Nazi bureaucracy was described as a maze of competing power groups that revolved around the personalities of bitter rivals who were diametrically opposed to the policies and interests of each other and who were ceaselessly plotting against and clashing with their rivals.” (Elly Dlin
Not even the most powerful Germans could keep up with the deaths of so many people, and to this day there is no single wartime document that contains the numbers of all the deaths during the Holocaust. Although people always look at the numbers of people that were directly killed throughout the Holocaust, there were so many more that were affected because of lost family. Assuming that 11 million people died in the Holocaust, and half of those people had a family of 3, 16.5 million people were affected by the Holocaust. Throughout the books and documentaries that we have watched, these key factors of hate and intolerance are overcome. The cause of the Holocaust was hate and intolerance, and many people fighting against it overcame this hate
Beautifully tragic, have you ever thought about what exactly happened during the Holocaust times. Well this review will walk you through how it was like to be taken from your home and watch it burn as you drive away, this will tell you how people who were Jews were treated just because they had a different religion. This will show the tragedies that happened leaving millions dead like they just vanished off the face of the earth.
Or they asserted that they were just being directed (Rensmann 170). This is actually unethical, he said. It is obvious that the responsibility is not able to rest completely on Nazi heads, as it remains apparent that the ordinary German resident was as well among the attempted genocide put in force by the individuals who provided Hitler’s cause. Most people appreciate the Holocaust’s nature, other than they fail to hold the whole country accountable. It remains impracticable to believe that the crime committed could have been focused entirely on one meticulous force movement.
In looking back upon his experience in Auschwitz, Primo Levi wrote in 1988: ?It is naïve, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism (Nazism) sanctifies its victims. On the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself.? (Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 40). The victims of National Socialism in Levi?s book are clearly the Jewish Haftlings. Survival in Auschwitz, a book written by Levi after he was liberated from the camp, clearly makes a case that the majority of the Jews in the lager were stripped of their human dignity. The Jewish prisoners not only went through a physical hell, but they were psychologically driven under as well. Levi writes, ??the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts? We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death?? (Levi, 41). One would be hard pressed to find passages in Survival in Auschwitz that portray victims of the camp as being martyrs. The treatment of the Jews in the book explicitly spells out the dehumanization to which they were subjected. It is important to look at how the Jews were degraded in the camp, and then examine whether or not they came to embody National Socialism after this.
During World War II there was event that lead to deaths of millions of innocent people. This even is known as the holocaust, millions of innocent people were killed violently, there was mass murders, rapes and horrific tortures. The question I will attempt to answer in the course of this paper is if the holocaust was a unique event in history. In my opinion there were other mass murders that people committed justified by the feeling of being threatened. But I don 't believe that any were as horrific and inhumane as Germany’s genocide of the Jewish people.
For some, it seems that the Holocaust in another lifetime, but for others it will be something they will never forget. Holocaust was a time for fighting. The Jewish would fight for the right to live as they were killed solely for being Jewish. The Holocaust began in 1939 and would continue through 1945. It was introduced by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, although he did not act alone. His mission would be to “exterminate” all minorities, but most abundantly, the Jews. Based on information given by About.com, it is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews.
The Holocaust has many reasons to it. Some peoples’ questions are never answered about the Holocaust and some answers are. The Holocaust killed over 6 million Jews (Byers.p.10.) Over 1.5 million children (Byers, p.10.)They were all sent to concentration camps to do hard labor work. Jewish people weren’t the only ones sent to concentration camps. People such as people with disabilities, Homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, and Socialists (Byers.p.12). Everyone that was sent to concentration camps was sent via Train cars (www.historychannel.com). They had no food, water, or rest rooms up to 18 days. Many people died from the lack of food and water (Byers, p.15.). They children under 12 and elderly were sent to death camps because they were too weak or young too do the hard labor work so they were exterminated quickly (Byers, p.17.). Everybody at the camps were ordered to wear a certain colored star so they were easily spotted. The Holocaust went on from 1939 to 1945. Throughout all those years it was BAD.
The Holocaust tends to be a bitter memory and an unpleasant subject to discuss. Although this event took place many years ago, repercussions are still present in the twenty first century. Especially in Germany, the Holocaust not only influences patriotism, but it also influences education and immigration policies. In contrast to other countries where nationalism is common, Germany has been forced to lessen the sense of nationalism in order to dispose false beliefs some individuals have of German racism. By allowing people from other countries to become German citizens, Germany avoids transmitting the sense of being a better and a cleaner race. A further sector influenced by the Holocaust is the education system. Approaches to teach about this event are difficult since the Holocaust is a sensitive issue and continues having vital importance in numerous families. Although the Holocaust continues conveying negative influences, the Holocaust also led to positive medical and technological improvements. In fact, numerous improvements are unknowingly implemented in societies today. Therefore, the Holocaust is one of the most horrific and influencing events in history whose repercussions are still felt in Germany today. However, in spite of the horrific occurrences, the associated medical findings and technological improvements make it intricate to look at the Holocaust as plainly evil. Thus, societies should view the Holocaust with a broader perspective.
There are times in history when desperate people plagued by desperate situations blindly give evil men power. These men, once given power, have only their own evil agendas to carry out. The Holocaust was the result of one such man's agenda. In short simplicity, shear terror, brutality, inhumanity, injustice, irresponsibility, immorality, stupidity, hatred, and pure evil are but a few words to describe the Holocaust.
Superiority and discrimination have been the underlying problem in many world-wide events throughout history leading into present day. Whether it be a caste system issue or a race issue, there’s always a group that labels themselves greater than that of another. This affair was apparent in 1940s Germany. The German people would be persuaded into a dictatorship led by Adolf Hitler, who while in power would give rise to Nazism, allowing the mistreatment of Jews to commence. This extermination would be known as “The Holocaust” translated to “sacrifice by fire” and would affect many different people groups during and after the event.
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.
We can spend hours upon hours, days after days if we want to just talk about what was wrong with the holocaust. We all understand that the holocaust was all about the slaughtering of the Jews. But what most people do not understand about the holocaust was the fact that who performed the killing, or why they did the killing. But understanding the holocaust is all about knowing who did the killing, and why they did the killing. We also need to understand the consequences, and punishment if you did not perform the killing if you are been asked to do it. It is clear that the holocaust is one of the world’s most devastating genocide in history of mankind.
The success of this holocaust can be simply stated in a few terms, fear, hate, and evil. This evil was those thousands of soldiers willing (some eagerly) to take the lives of the Jews without a second thought of having taken a life. In the same way the African slaves had been dehumanized to the point of not requiring the same treatment as white people because they weren’t considered humans rather animals by many slaveholders, so was the idea of Jews, executed as an animal not a human, seen by the Nazi’s as purging the bad from the
The Holocaust, the mass killing of the Jewish people in Europe, is the largest genocide in history to this date. Over the course of the Holocaust nearly six million Jewish people were killed by the Nazi Party and Germany led by Adolf Hitler. There are multiple contributing factors to the Holocaust that made it so large in scope. Historians argue which of these factors were most significant. The most significant contributing factor is the source of the Holocaust, the reason it occurred. This source is Adolf Hitler and his hatred for Jewish people. In comparison to the choices of the Allies to not accept Jewish refugees and to not take direct military action to end the Holocaust, the most significant contributing factor of the Holocaust is that Adolf Hitler was able to easily rise to power with the support of the German people and rule Germany.
It is hard to grasp the number of lives lost during the Holocaust. How someone could have so much hatred towards one group of people. Or how so many people could set back and watch something like this take place without protest. To begin to understand how a tragedy like the Holocaust could have took place without intervention we need to understand antisemitism.