During World War II, the treatment of the Jewish population was horrendous. The Holocaust itself was the annihilation of six million Jews; by 1945 two out of three European Jews had been killed. The Jews felt the effect of more than four hundred decrees and regulations that restrained all aspects of their private and public life by the Nazis. Maus, by At Spiegelman is a prime example of the methods the Nazis used against the Jewish population during the war. The Nazis used methods such as the registration of Jews, placing them in ghettos, and creating concentration camps to control the Jewish population and these methods came with short and long term effects.
One of the methods implemented by the Nazis was the use of concentration camps, in
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To make the Nazi’s task easier and more effective, they required them to wear yellow stars on their clothing so they could be spotted in public. For example, the concentration camp in Auschwitz, many incoming prisoners were assigned a camp serial number. Only prisoners who were selected for work were issued a number; those prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers were not registered. In Maus, there is an image, in which Vladek is pedaling and one can see a number written on his arm. This gives the reader an indication of how during World War II, Jews were forced to register so that the Nazis would know who they are and thus they were “branded”. This image is superimposed on the scenes relating Vladek’s entry into the concentration camps. Making Jews wear a number or have a number imprinted on them, dehumanized them because they were not considered humans in the eyes of the Nazis and non-Jews. The registration process was as follows: prisoners would be registered before undressing. They would then be tattooed with a registration number, shaved of al body hair, disinfected and forced through showers that were extremely cold or painfully hot. The fact that they were forced to be branded and be considered a number during that time just shows how much control the Nazis had over them
Schindler’s List exposes the true meaning and the reality of this form of the identification. When a Jewish woman asked during the required registration, “What if I just took [the armband] off? What are [the Nazis] going to do?” the answer she received was “They will just shoot you.”
Dehumanization was a big part of these camps. The Nazis would kick innocent Jewish families and send them to concentration or death camps. The main way they dehumanized these Jewish people is when they take all their possessions. In Night they go around taking all there gold and silver, make them leave their small bags of clothing on the train, and finally give them crappy clothing. All this reduces their emotions; they go from owing all these possessions to not having a cent to their name. If I was in that situation I would just be in shock with such a huge change in such a short amount of time. The next way they dehumanized the Jewish people were they stopped using names and gave them all numbers. For example in Night Eliezer’s number was A-7713. Not only were all their possessions taken, but also their names. Your name can be something that separates you from another person. Now they are being kept by their number, almost as if that’s all they are, a number. If I was in their place I would question my importance, why am I here, am I just a number waiting to be replaced? The third way they were dehumanized was that on their “death march” they were forced to run nonstop all day with no food or water. If you stopped or slowed down, you were killed with no regards for your life. The prisoners were treated like cattle. They were being yelled at to run, run faster and such. They were not treated as equal humans. If the officers were tired, they got replaced. Dehumanization affected all the victims of the Holocaust in some sort of way from them losing all their possessions, their name, or being treated unfairly/ like animals.
Each camp was responsible for a different part, but all were after the same thing: elimination of the Jewish race. In these camps they had cruel punishments, harsh housing, and they had Nazi guards watching them and killing them on a daily basis. While being forced to live in Auschwitz, they endured many cruel and harsh punishments. The main form of punishment is the gas chambers. These chambers were cells that were made underground and were able to be sealed.
By means of comic illustration and parody, Art Spiegelman wrote a graphic novel about the lives of his parents, Vladek and Anja, before and during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s Maus Volumes I and II delves into the emotional struggle he faced as a result of his father’s failure to recover from the trauma he suffered during the Holocaust. In the novel, Vladek’s inability to cope with the horrors he faced while imprisoned, along with his wife’s tragic death, causes him to become emotionally detached from his son, Art. Consequently, Vladek hinders Art’s emotional growth. However, Art overcomes the emotional trauma his father instilled in him through his writing.
Nazi soldiers took Jews to concentration camps by cargo trains like they were cattle, they branded them with numbers and their Jewish name disappeared also Jews were beaten ferociously and sometimes to death. The Nazi soldiers treated the Jews and many others without any type of respect; they absolutely saw the people as animals and treated them as if they were. ...
Prisoners and concentration camps A. The Gestapo and the Thought Police B. Disappearance and re-education of people C. Concentration and extermination camps
The Holocaust is known to all of us in some manner. Maybe we know someone who survived this
In these camps that these people were sent to, the Germans identified each respective group with a triangular patch sewn onto the people’s clothes. Each patch would have a color, denoting each person into their respective groups. There were also letters placed onto the patches which showed the country of origin of each person.
“A typical concentration camp consisted of barracks that were secured from escape by barbed wire, watchtowers and guards. The inmates usually lived in overcrowded barracks and slept in bunk “beds”. In the forced labour camps, for
In that time period the Germans and the Allied Forces were in war. When they were in war the Germans took all Jews (except the ones in hiding) to multiple concentration camps and death camps. When they were sent to concentration camps, they were ordered to take off all their jewelry, gold teeth and clothes. They were provided with stripped pajamas with numbers on them so they can be recognized by their number and not by their names. They were also tattooed on their left forearm with the same number that was on their stripped pajamas.
The Jewish people were targeted, hunted, tortured, and killed, just for being Jewish, Hitler came to office on January 20, 1933; he believed that the German race had superiority over the Jews in Germany. The Jewish peoples’ lives were destroyed; they were treated inhumanly for the next 12 years, “Between 1933 and 1945, more than 11 million men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust. Approximately six million of these were Jews” (Levy). Hitler blamed a lot of the problems on the Jewish people, being a great orator Hitler got the support from Germany, killing off millions of Jews and other people, the German people thought it was the right thing to do. “To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community” (History.com Staff).
The Holocaust was a terrible time for people who were a different race, or if you were Jewish. It started in Germany in 1933 by a man named Adolf Hitler when he came into rule, but ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by allied powers of the Britain and America. The term holocaust can be translated into Hebrew and it means devastation or ruin. The Holocaust was a mass murder of about six million Jews during World War II, a systematic state sponsored murder for Adolf Hitler and the rest of the Nazis and they invaded German-occupied territories. Out of all nine million of the Jews who chose to live in Europe, about two-thirds were killed in the Holocaust. One million children, two million women and three million men were killed that were Jewish. There was a network of over 40,000 facilities in Germany and Germany-occupied territories were used to hold and kill Jews and other victims. Some scholars today argue that the murder of disabled people and the Romani should be included, and some use the common noun ‘holocaust’ to describe other Nazi murders including Soviet prisoner of war. The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages, like making laws. Various laws, like the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, were to exclude Jews from the civil society and enacted in Germany before the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Concentration camps were established in which inmates would work in slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. Whenever Germany conquered new territory in Eastern Europe, the Nazis murdered more than a million political opponents and Jews in mass shootings. Most of the Jews or Romanis that were found in overcrowded ghettoes were transported by freight trains to extermination camps and if they survived the j...
Finally, as part of “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, they created concentration and killing camps. Another thing the Nazi’s did was to use eugenics as another means to micromanage the population. What is eugenics, you might ask? It’s the field of scientific study or the belief in genetically improving qualities, attributes and traits in the human race and/or improving the species as a whole—usually done by controlled/selective breeding. Those with positive, desirable, and superior traits are encouraged to reproduce and may be given monetary incentives by the government to have large families.
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
Serial numbers were used to keep track of the thousands of prisoners who arrived each day at the concentration camps. Serial numbers were tattooed only at one place, Auschwitz. Prisoners were given a tattoo if they were considered fit to work. Those who were chosen for death, were not given a tattoo. The serial number was located on the outer left forearm. A single needle was used to pierce the prisoners skin and left a permanent mark of their number .Upon arrival, the prisoners’ clothing and belongings were confiscated from them and replaced by a striped uniform, also know as the “striped pajamas”. The prisoners were given leather or wooden shoes without socks, which cause them to have sore feet. It would rub against their ankles, also causing pain. This was also dangerous because of the polluted environment they were confined in, their exposed feet could lead to infection or even death. The serial number was sewn into these uniforms along with a color coded triangle that showed their reason for being at the camps. Men and women were given similar, yet different articles of clothing. Women got a striped dress while men wore a hat, vest, coat, and trousers. Having uniforms changed every six weeks caused these clothes to be very dirty; Jews worked in these performing intense and difficult labor. Nazis also utilized color coded symbols for labeling prisoners based on what the reasoning was for imprisonment. Homosexuals were labeled pink, criminals had a green triangle marked on them, asocials were marked with a black triangle, political prisoners were red, and Jehovah's Witnesses were marked with a purple triangle. Being marked with a yellow triangle was a common way to showcase one was Jewish. Sometimes a yellow triangle and a r...