Understanding the Holocaust: A Historical Perspective

The Holocaust is a subject familiar to most people around the world. They either learned about it in school or on TV. The word “Holocaust” comes from the Greek words “holos” and “kaustos. “Holos” which means whole and the word “kaustos” meaning burned. Originally it is historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Throughout history the word has taken a whole different meaning. The modern definition of the word means the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews and other groups by the German Nazi “regime” during World War ll (History, 2016). The Holocaust was one of the darkest times for both Germany and the Jews who were targeted because Hitler believed that they didn’t meet his standards that would compromise

On both sides of the walls there were deep ditches running the entire length of the perimeter. Inside, the camps always had an Appellplatz, meaning a roll call square. An Appellplatz was a stand where prisoners would often stand for hours while waiting to get their names called indicating that they were present, many times prisoners would often be executed on the blocks as well. Prisoners of these camps didn’t just die of execution many died from hunger, and disease as well due to the inhumane way they were treated. The estimated number today that died from result from inhuman slave labor, hunger and disease is at least 500,000. In the camp the sick the old and those who couldn’t keep up with the work were selected and then killed with gas, injections, or shot. Others were chose for “Pseudo- scientific experiments” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2016), which meant they most often lost their life’s. Concentration camps were horrific but the Nazis found a way to top the idea of a concentration camp and that idea was an extermination camp dating from 1941-1945. An extermination camp was a camp constructed with the purpose of mass murdering Jews. A total of 6 extermination camps were established for the genocide of the Jews. Nazis murdered around three million Jews which was half of the six million

A few of these ways were starvation, executions, exhaustion, and forced labor. Jews and the many other groups among them were treated so poorly and lived in really bad conditions that it was the cause of their deaths. The prisoners were fed three times a day. Morning, noon, and evening. The people who didn’t do much physical work received 1,300 calories and who was engaged in hard labor consumed about approximately 1,700 calories. With a starvation diet like that, several weeks in the camps, most prisoners began to experience organic deterioration that led to a states called “Muzulman,” which was an extreme physical exhaustion that ended in death (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2016). I can’t fathom why someone would do that to other people. We’re all the same if it comes down to it. In all honesty no one is better than anyone. We’re all human and no one deserves that. The people at that were at the concentration camps didn’t do anything wrong. The only reason that got them murdered is that they weren’t what Hitler