Hitler's Disregard For Human Life During World War II

Eleven million individuals were victimized by the Holocaust. Six million of those victims were Jewish, while the other five million were groups targeted by the Nazi’s because they didn’t fit their discriminative criteria. Inhumane practices were used in attempts to purify and unify the German state (Novick, 225). When the Holocaust is discussed, the Jewish victims are usually the main focal point of the massive “genocide.”

Throughout the course of humanity, we have experienced terrible transgressions in our society. Although they took place sixty-one years apart, similar horrific events from the Holocaust (1933-1945) and the Rwandan Genocide (1994) occurred. In Night, the Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state sponsored persecution and murder of approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis believed they were “racially superior” so they killed the Jews because they were deemed “inferior” and needed to be eliminated.

For the past 300 years, the world’s society has displayed lots of unbelievable human cruelty. For example, slavery in the 18th and 19th century, African Americans were forced into harsh work labor because of their skin color. Then in the 20th century, a determined dictator, Adolf Hitler, murdered and tortured eleven million lives. This horrifying event was called the Holocaust, it occurred in 1933 but ended in 1945. Adolf Hitler was angered about the result of World War 1, so he blamed Jewish people, the disabled, and other groups. During the holocaust, the eleven million lives were forced into harsh work labors or was put into gas chambers and was killed instantly. People described the Holocaust as inhumane act, and the people that survived it, could really say it was a scarring memory.

During the evils that took place in World War II, the Germans impugned the natural rights of the Jewish people living in Europe and ultimately executed millions of innocent people. With a basis of racial superiority and social darwinism, the Germans’ ruthless attempt to remove an entire racial population involved the killing of pure children and defenseless elderly citizens. The fact that the basic universal rights, which should apply to all of humanity, were intruded upon illustrates the absolute evil in man and the lack of response by the rest of society. Ultimately, those who did survive found it their duty and responsibility to share their difficult experiences with the rest of the world to avoid a recurrence of such prejudice and hatred.

In the 1930’s in Germany, people of all ethnicities were faced with hateful laws, which were prejudice and discriminating. Hitler’s idea was to exterminate as any people that did not fit the superior German race. People who didn’t fit Hitler's expectations were treated with no respect and were condemned of what they owned. As a result, people lived in poverty and were soon moved to different concentration camps. Inside of the concentration camps people suffered from intense hunger, extreme sorrow for family members that were killed by Nazi Soldiers or died from diseases in the camp, forced labor, and further agony.

WW2 took the lives of more than 72.4 million people, ("11 Facts About the Holocaust.") and killed more than two-thirds of all the people living in Europe at the time, ("World War 2 Statistics."). As part of their service to their country, the Nazis were commanded to perform horrific actions any reasonable person would question. These tortures included, “putting people’s hands in boiling water until the skin and fingernails came off...pulling teeth and cutting and twisting off the ears; running electric current through the victims…” ("Nazi Torture and Medical Experimentation.") “Prisoners were submerged in ice water to see the effects of hypothermia, injected with chemicals and poisons to test their effectiveness, sterilized, vivisected, and operated on without anesthetic,” (Smallwood). When many of these prominent Nazi soldiers were put on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, they argued they were serving their country, following orders from their superior. Here, we confront the thought-provoking question of whether it is just to obey your superior or serve your nation while breaking the moral code of humanity. These Nazis committed acts and imposed punishments upon their prisoners, that many have labeled as sinister, inhumane, unjust, and gruesome. But can we blame them for following the demands of their superiors and their country? Is it

It is necessary for us to study and recite the wrongdoings of World War II. We must focus on how the Jews were tortured, the Nazi’s racist behaviour and the starvation of the prisoners. The Germans violent torture and abusive behaviour should be the symbol of injustice for all generations. “My foot aching, I shivered with every step. Just a few more metres

A common misconception about the Holocaust is that the world was naïve of the atrocities happening under the Nazi’s rule. The horrors of the Holocaust were not left undocumented. Unfortunately, many saw these malicious acts as insignificant to the global population; people only start sympathizing when the hindrance affects them. Hitler, with the help of his many allies, achieved to murder millions of innocent men, women, and children. After spending this semester studying the Holocaust, I have realized that the Nazis’ greatest ally was neither an individual nor a country; Hitler’s greatest ally was indifference.

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” -Primo Levi. The Holocaust was an age of man killing man over prejudices and blind hatred. Around 6 million Jews, around 3 million Ethnic Poles, 3 million Ukrainian Slavs, 2-3 million Soviets, 1.5 million Belarusian Slavs, around 400,000 Serbs, 270,000 disabled, 90,000-220,000 Romani, 80,000-200,000 Freemasons, around 20,000 Slovenes, 5,000-15,000 Homesexuals, 2,500-5,000 Jehova’s Witnesses, and 7,000 Spanish republicans were murdered, forced into ghettos, abused, and discriminated against by the Natzi’s. The mental trauma these individuals were forced to go through must have crushed their soul, hope, and their will to live.

The Holocaust was the systematic killing and extermination of millions of Jews and other Europeans by the German Nazi state between 1939 and 1945. Innocent Europeans were forced from their homes into concentration camps, executed violently, and used for medical experiments. The Nazis believed their acts against this innocent society were justified when hate was the motivating factor. The Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on a society. It forces societies to examine the responsibility and role of citizenship, in addition to approaching the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction. (Holden Congressional Record). Despite the adverse treatment of the Jews, there are lessons that can be learned from the Holocaust: The Nazi’s rise to power could have been prevented, the act of genocide was influenced by hate, and the remembrance of the Holocaust is of the utmost importance for humanity.

The Holocaust of 1933-1945, was the systematic killing of millions of European Jews by the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazis) (Webster, 430). This project showed the treacherous treatment towards all Jews of that era. Though many fought against this horrific genocide, the officials had already determined in their minds to exterminate the Jews. Thus, the Holocaust was a malicious movement that broke up many homes, brought immense despair, and congregated great discrimination. The Holocaust was an act of Hell on earth.

If we decided to conceal the history of the Holocaust, the next generation will never understand unhealable wound that caused by Nazi or feel sympathy with the Holocaust victims. Nazi absurd legislation and ill-treatment against Jews’ basic human rights during the Holocaust was one of the cruelest acts of genocide in the history or even in the way human beings treat each other. It is claimed that six million just a small portion out of untold numbers who were strangled, tortured, shot or buried alive; some died of starvation, of thirst. According to Rabbi Barry Leff, Temple Beth-EI’s interim spiritual leader, innumerable victims were forced out of their own homes, viciously separated from their relatives, and taken advantages of their labors under Nazi strict supervision. The Nazi target was also Jews spiritual implication.

Years after the liberation of the German Concentration Camps, one can still be overwhelmed with so many questions - mostly “Why?”. Why would a nation of people feel the need to cause incomprehensible pain to an entire culture of people? Why would a nation support the need to conduct the most horrendous medical experiments on a group of their own citizens? Why would so many blindly follow and adhere to orders to inflict suffering on men, women, and children whose only fault was being born Jewish, disabled, or otherwise deemed expendable? These questions cause newer generations to examine the “whys” so that, as a global community, we never repeat such atrocities again.

The tragic events that occurred during world war two and the holocaust were not only horrific but also morally wrong. The Jewish culture was targeted for mass genocide, by the hand of a mad-man bent on world domination, and the only way to prevent another incident like this from happening again, is to thoroughly educate the public. The actions and events that Hitler and his followers proposed not only helped the world realize the extent of his destruction but also how horrible it would be if the events were to happen again. The aftermath of the war and holocaust left half of Europe in ruins, and more than six million Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies, and Africans dead, not including

The moral dilemma that I was presented was killing 3-year old Adolf Hitler to prevent the Holocaust. I can try to change Hitler’s mind, but he will still make the same decision, no matter what. If I decide to kill him or not, I would not be charged for the murder, which is the plus side of this moral dilemma. After a long week of thinking about this question, I thought to myself that I could not have the courage to kill an infant. I have a guilty conscience and if I were to do something like that, I would not be able to forgive myself. I understand that Hitler’s choices during World War II was inhumane, but it is a part of world history that needs to be studied and to not be reiterated. On the contrary, if I don’t kill him, six million