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The Holocaust was a bloody, terrifying event that unfortunately happened during the world’s most bloody war, World War II. The end result of a portion of deaths of the Holocaust resulted in astounding number of about 6,000,000 Jewish people dead. However, there were about 13,684,900 other lives that were taken during this “cleansing period” that Adolf Hitler once said. Those lives included civilians in surrounding countries, resisters against the Nazi nation, opposing religious members, and many more. Although, over 6,000,000 Jewish people died, many others died who are just as memorable.
One of the several groups that were victimized in the Holocaust were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Jehovah’s Witnesses “did not believe in the Nazi ideology and
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were willing to die for their beliefs” (Schwartz). They were the group that stood the firmest against the Nazis. Hitler himself thought of himself as a God. Hitler put the thought into his own head that he was a God and that everyone should worship him. However, Jehovah’s Witnesses only worship one God, Jehovah. Similar to the Jews, many Jehovah’s Witnesses were thrown into jail and even concentration camps. Around 2,250 Jehovah’s Witnesses were put into concentration camps. They “were forced to wear purple armbands” which had signified that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses (Schwartz). In addition, an appalling 1,900 Jehovah’s Witnesses died during the Holocaust. Many of them died fighting for what they believed in. Homosexuals were victimized in the Holocaust along with Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“The Nazis believed that male homosexuals were weak, effeminate men who could not fight for the German nation.” The Nazis based their army on power and no weakness. The homosexuals, during this time of World War II, were viewed in that manner. Hitler’s plan for the “Master race” did not include homosexuals in that blueprint. Eliminating these “racial dangers” included the homosexuals being mistreated, labored, and also executed (Persecution of Homosexuals in The Third Reich). They wore pink triangles on their clothes to identify them as homosexual. In addition, thousands were put into concentration camps. “Between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexuals died in concentration camps during the Holocaust” (Schwartz). In total, over 55,000 homosexuals were brutally murdered. They all died for the way they …show more content…
lived. Even the disabled were persecuted during the Holocaust.
The Nazis believed that the disabled were a burden to society because they needed care and were considered an insult to their idea of a perfect race. About 375,000 people were sterilized against their will due to their disabilities. “In the autumn of 1939, Adolf Hitler secretly authorized a medically administered program of “mercy death” code-named “Operation T4,” in reference to the address of the program’s Berlin headquarters at Tiergartenstrasse 4. Between 1940 and 1941 approximately 70,000 Austrian and German disabled people were killed under the T4 program” (People with Disabilities). In total, a staggering amount of 250,000 disabled people died during the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of people died for their uncontrollable
genetics. In conclusion, many other people were killed during the Holocaust other than Jewish people. These other people included Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and the disabled. Not only were there Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and disabled ones that were executed, but also Soviet civilians and prisoners, non-Jewish Polish civilians, Serbian civilians, Roma Gypsies, and many additional innocent people. What do all of these victims have in common? They all are equally memorable.
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
Jews' Beliefs and the Holocaust In the eyes of many Jews, the Shoah was the most evil act taken out on. the Jewish community and the community. Shoah is a Hebrew word meaning "desolation." and has become the preferred term for the Holocaust for Jews. scholars who believe the word 'holocaust' has lost its significance.
The Holocaust or the Ha-Shoah in Hebrew meaning ‘the day of the Holocaust and heroism’ refers to the period of time from approximately January 30,1933, when Adolf Hitler became the legal official of Germany, to May 8,1945. After the war was over in Europe, the Jews in Europe were being forced to endure the horrifying persecution that ultimately led to the slaughter of over 6 million Jews with about 1.5 million of them being children as well as the demolition of 5,000 Jewish communities.
Both the Nazi Political Movemen,t in Germany, and the post World War II/Cold War attacks on homosexuals, were driven by similar goals. The Nazi movement arose after Germany had lost World War 1 and was being restricted heavily by the Treaty of Versailles. The country faced major inflation and extremely high unemployment rates. The Nazi party came to power and targeted homosexuals in their push to cleanse the country because homosexuals could not reproduce to add more followers to their movement, and also because they were afraid that homosexuals would draw other young men from reproducing. Later in the movement, in 1936, Himmler labeled homosexuals as a threat to the German race (Plant). After that, it was not about population growth; homosexuality was seen as an active threat to the Germans. The Nazis aimed to clean up the mess Germany was experiencing after the first World War and saw homosexuality as a symptom of societal moral decay and as a threat to the growth of their movement.
The T4 program was not the beginning of Germany’s effort to reach a super race. Leading up to the war Hitler enacted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases” in the year of 1933. The law called for the sterilization of anyone that had any hereditary illnesses. The list of hereditary illnesses included: “schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and syphilitic diseases, retardation, encephalitis, Huntington’s chorea and other neurological conditions.” (History Place) This law was enforced by opening 200 genetic health courts that would analyze the medical records of individuals and decide if they were to be sterilized or not. The sterilization of people usually involved the use of drugs, x-rays, or uterine irritants. Dr. Horst Schumann did a lot of these experiments with sterilization at Auschwitz, where he would take a group of men/women and would expose them to x-rays. Most of his experiments with x-rays were disappointing but he kept using this method. After he subjected his subjects to x...
The Holocaust was a very impressionable period of time. It not only got media attention during that time, but movies, books, websites, and other forms of media still remember the Holocaust. In Richard Brietman’s article, “Lasting Effects of the Holocaust,” he reviews two books and one movie that were created to reflect the Holocaust (BREITMAN 11). He notes that the two books are very realistic and give historical facts and references to display the evils that were happening in concentration camps during the Holocaust. This shows that the atrocities that were committed during the Holocaust have not been forgotten. Through historical writings and records, the harshness and evil that created the Holocaust will live through centuries, so that it may not be repeated again (BREITMAN 14).
Some of the people had a positive viewpoint. ONe such person was Fritz Lawz, who was a professor of race hygiene at the university of Munich (“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). There were also authors that expresssed their strong agreement to the program. One such author was Karl Bindings who partnered with Adolf Hoche to write “The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life”(“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). Throught the propaganda some families became strong supporters of the program. One such family was the family of the blind Gerhard Herbert Kretschmar, who was born with one leg and part of one arm missing. Gerhard was called an idiot by his father and his family requested his killing to Hitler. Hitler approved and Gerhard became known as the Knauer Child and was a catalyst of euthanasia (“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). Some people had a negative viewpoint of the program, like Kurt Gerstein. Kurt was part of the Nazi party, but left after his sister-in-law as killed through the T-4 Program. He used his sorrow to preach at churches of the horrible doings of the Nazi’s. He had no success (Hogan #36). Others, like Samuel Beckett made fun of Hitler’s standards saying that “An Aryan must be blonde like Hitler, think like Gorig, handsome like the Goebbels, virile, like Rӧhn- and named Rosenberg.” With all these viewpoints many were left confused and no actions were being taken to stop the program. It continued
Only 7,000 emaciated survivors of a Nazi extermination process that killed an estimated six million Jews were found at Auschwitz” (Rice, Earle). Most of these deaths occurred towards the end of the war; however, there were still a lot of lives that had been miraculously spared. “According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners left in the camps in January 1945. It has been estimated that nearly half of the total number of concentration camp deaths between 1933 and 1945 occurred during the last year of the war” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in the world’s history.
A total of 11 million people died during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was started by the Nazi’s in the 1930’s. It was where about six million Jews were killed. Misinformed individuals theorize that the Holocaust is not a form of genocide, but they are misguided. The Holocaust should be considered an example of genocide based on the UN’s definition, the stages of genocide and the specific evidence provided in the memoir Night.
They were stripped of their political rights and taken from their homes and friends with limited to no warning and uncertain what was next to come. An abundance of people were forced to one of the thousands of concentrations camps where they were separated from their families and directed to either a labor camp, where many would suffer, or to a death camp, where were they would unfortunately be executed immediately. In 1933, Hitler finally was named Chancellor of Germany and began to organize what he called the “Final Solution” (Balson). He and his Nazi party believed Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the mentally ill were violating racial purity in Europe and devised a way to slowly kill them off and remove them from Germany and the rest of the world (Balson). Many people know and understand the events occurring during the Holocaust, but they probably don’t realize there was a plethora of steps in setting up concentration camps, persecuting the targeted groups, and keeping Hitler’s and the Nazis’ intentions a secret.
The Nazis believed that male homosexuals were weak, epicene men who could not fight for the German nation. Homosexuals couldn’t produce children; therefore, they were unable to increase the German birthrate. Since they could not produce they were a racial danger because they could not contribute to the Aryan race. The Nazis believed women were not only inferior to men but also dependent on them by nature. Since they believe that these women were dependent on men they considered lesbians to be less threatening than male homosexuals. The Nazis did not target lesbians because they believed lesbians could still carry out a German woman's primary role: to be a mother of as many "Aryan" babies as possible. The Nazis did not classify lesbians as homosexual prisoners, and only male homosexual prisoners had to wear the pink triangle.
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.
In the 1940s, homophobia was extremely prevalent in the United States. People who were openly gay were often stigmatized. “Homosexuality was discussed as ‘an aspect of three personality disorders: psychopaths who were sexual perverts, paranoid personalities who suffered from homosexual panic, and schizoid personalities’ who displayed gay symptoms” (Kaiser 29). Many regulations and practices discriminated against gays. The military found homosexuality to be a direct threat to strength and safety of the U.S. government and the American people, in general. In 1941 the Army and the Selective Service banned homosexuals from participation in the war (Kaiser 29). All major religions considered it sinful and throughout the country, more and more people found it to be immoral. Life was hard for homosexuals in the early and mid-twentieth century. They were forced to hide their sexuality in order to escape derision or imprisonment.
The Holocaust is the history of continuing mourning and dismay. It seemed to be no ignition of concern or sympathy to lighten up this dreadful history. The Holocaust was the extermination of six million Jews and millions of other people that fell into the “undesirable” category, including blacks, gypsies, and homosexuals, by the Nazi Party during World War II. By 1945, two out of every three Jews were killed: 1.5 million children were murdered. Holocaust survivor, Abel Herzberg said,” There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.”
The Holocaust represents 11 million lives that abruptly ended, the extermination of people not for who they were but for what they were. Groups such as handicaps, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents and others were persecuted by the Nazis because of their religious/political beliefs, physical defects, or failure to fall into the Aryan ideal. The Holocaust was lead by a man named Adolf Hitler who was born in 1889, and died in 1945.