Holocaust : A Wave Of Mass Murder Swept Across Europe

The article, “The Girl Who Lived Forever”, by Kristen Lewis, describes the hardships of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl, and her family, who like millions of other Jews, perished at the hands of the Nazis during WWII. Anne Frank lived during one of the most terrifying and horrific historical events the world has ever seen, the Holocaust. She and her family managed to survive for 2 long years in hiding, by living in a secret annex behind her father’s pectin factory. In August of 1944, the SS captured Anne and the others hiding in the annex. All but Otto Frank, Anne’s father, perished in the Nazi concentration camps. Though they lived through unspeakable and unimaginable challenges, Anne, her family and their friends showed a tremendous amount of courage trying to defy Hitler and his evil regime.

In the selection, “Isabella Katz And the Holocaust: A Living Testimony”, by Richard L. Greaves, the author tells about the Holocaust, the destruction of the Jews by the Nazis and the terrible experiences of people who were there. Оne of the participants of these events is Isabelle Katz that lived with her family in Hungary. In 1944, Hitler occupied Hungary with the idea to kill all the Jews. One day, fascists took her family and all other Jews from their homes. Later, all of them were transported to the camp of Auschwitz. Upon arrival at the camp, all families were separated. Isabella heard screams of people burning in crematorium within 9 months when she was there. The Jews in the camp were on the brink of their life and death, depending only

“If you say 1.5 million, it’s just a number. When you see a person, you realize what it was, what it meant, and the one life lost, and then you can multiply that by a million and a half, and you realize what a horror it was” (Burstein). The Holocaust is one event that captures how hideous the world can be. During the duration of 12 years, 11 million people of different cultures, religions, and races were executed because of the Nazi party. Of those 11 million people, 1.5 million were children (Burstein). Hana Brady was one of these children who was persecuted because she chose to practice a religion other than what the Nazi party thought was proper. Although the Holocaust was a deplorable time in world history, humankind had the unfortunate

Jews have perished because of their beliefs since the beginning of time but never have so many Jews been persecuted worldwide as they were in World War II. Anne Frank’s diary reaches a place within all of our hearts because it reminds us how easily the innocents can suffer. Sometimes we may choose to close our eyes or look the other way when unjustifiable things happen in our society and Anne’s tale reminds us that ignorance, in part, claimed her life. Sadly, her story is but one of many of those who died in the Holocaust and as with other Jews, her fate was determined by the country she lived in, her sex and her age.

In 1935, Hitler enacted the Nuremberg Race Laws. These laws targeted various groups of people and stripped them of their citizenship. At first, Jews were the only individuals who were majorly impacted. They were not permitted to marry German citizens or raise German flags. As time passed, however, these rules became more and more restricted and many other "undesirables" (Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally disabled, Communists, and more) were negatively affected as their names were added to the target list within the Nuremberg Laws.

This view of social dominance and evolutionary superiority is very in line with the views of the Nazi Party and ordinary Germans. This hate for the Jews starts with Hitler’s Ant-Jewish propaganda and the implementation of the Nuremberg laws. In “Perish the Jew,” Hitler puts his views of racial superiority into writing, “The Aryan regards work as the basis for the maintenance of the national community as such; the Jew regards work as a means of exploiting other peoples” (Hitler 223). With this writing and other propaganda, Hitler successfully spread a hate for Jewish people across the country. Hitler then created the Nuremberg Laws, which slowly but successfully stripped the Jews of all their rights and made them second-class citizens in Germany. The Jews slowly became, in the eyes of the German people and the SS, people who could be consciously oppressed and turned into slave workers.

The Holocaust, a morbid atrocity that made people question humanity, was the cause of millions of deaths. One of those victims of this brutality was Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis along with her family. Although she was merely ordinary, Anne Frank kept a diary which became a significant, historical artifact in the modern world as it details her account of concealing her identity from the outside world. Her story, told in an innocent perspective, allows individuals to reflect the dreadful events of the Holocaust and acknowledge how far we have come since then. Even though she died along with millions of other victims from the Holocaust, her spirit still exists thanks to her articulately written words in her diary which is now considered one of the most famous works of literature. Anne Frank’s legacy still lives on today because her story provides a primary source of a dark period in history, insightful contemplation of humanity, and motivation for people to stand up against unjustified persecution.

The Nuremberg Laws effectively banned the Jews from any citizen rights. The ‘Blood Law’ or Reich’s Citizenship Law banned Jews from marrying Germans, it banned them from sexual relations with Aryans, it banned the Jewish people from displaying the National flag and effectively stripped them of their rights to citizenship. The debate about what defined a Jew tested Hitler in the weeks following the Nuremberg Rally eventually creating the ‘mischlinge’ category of 1st or 2nd degree half Jews, all of which were subject to less but varying degrees of discrimination. The two years that followed were also relatively quiet as far the Jewish question was concerned

It’s difficult to imagine a society where millions upon millions are murdered because of their religion and race. According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust “Approximately 11 million people were killed because of Nazi genocidal policy” (“Victims”). Not only did they get killed because they were Jews. Some people were undesirable by Nazi standards because of who they were their genetic or cultural origins, or health conditions. These included Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, and people with physical or mental disabilities. Others were Nazi victims because of what they did. These victims of the Nazi regime included Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, the dissenting clergy, Communists, Socialists, a socials, and other political enemies” (victims”). They didn’t consider Jews as a race they consider it as a religion. According to the Jewish virtual library “Hitler focused his propaganda against the Versailles Treaty, the "November criminals," the Marxists and the visible, internal enemy No. 1, the "Jew," who was responsible for all Germany's domestic problems. In the twenty-five-point programme of the NSDAP announced on 24 February 1920, the exclusion of the Jews from the Volk community, the myth of Aryan race supremacy and extreme nationalism were combined with "socialistic" ideas of profit-sharing and nationalization inspired by ideologues like Gottfried Feder. Hitler's first written utterance on political questions dating from

“Unity, Justice, and Freedom”, is what Germany proclaimed as their motto (World Atlas). As a discriminator, a man by the name of Adolf Hitler abounded not in this motto. Hitler hated the Jews so, that he

Throughout the Holocaust, “the Nazis killed over 1.5 billion children” (Children during the Holocaust). Of these children, one million of them were Jewish. The Nazis had no good reason to kill them; they only killed these innocent children because Hitler did not care for their race. The Nazis, a forceful, merciless power led by Adolf Hitler brainwashed the country of Germany into believing that Jews and other races were awful. These children bravely fought persecution and avoided death by hiding or receiving help, which makes us remember these people like Anne Frank, but it was not just the Jewish and other races that were in trouble, the German children got into trouble by joining Hitler Youth.

Nazi’s even suspected you were Jewish then they would send you away to work or to

Through pathos, logos, and ethos, Elie Wiesel’s essay, God is God Because He Remembers, convinces the people of today that memory is important to reveal the message of never again. Wiesel starts by stating, “I remember, May 1944: I was 15 and a half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where

in public. There identification cards and passports were even marked with a "J" pointing out that they were jewish. This was all parts of a series of laws know as the Nuremberg Race laws which declared jews non-germans. Hitler even went as far as banning jewish scientists, chemists, and physicists. He was told by Carl Bosch during a meeting concerning synthetic oil that, "expulsion of jewish physicists and chemists would stall German progress in the sciences for a century."(4) Hitler

Point 4 of the “25 Points” stated that “Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood…” For the Nazis, German “blood” became the unifying factor. The common ethnic background became the basis for the creation of a nation. In addition to defining the members of the nation, the Nazi’s used race to define the outsiders. Point 8 stated that “any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans … be forced immediately to leave the Reich.” The ethnic definition of the members (citizens) of the nation also allowed for the Nazis to exclude those who did not fit the definition from participation in the