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The Holocaust, Original Sacrifice By Fire

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The Holocaust, original meaning “sacrifice by fire,” was a German ideology in which six million Jews were slaughtered in different ways by Nazis (“US Holocaust Memorial Museum”). Adolf Hitler believed that Jews were an inferior race to Germans and in order to ensure the safety of the German people, all Jews needed to be eliminated. Hitler also believed that Jews were Communists and that they would oppose German rule by all means necessary (Modern World History, ch. 16). Following this false ideology, Hitler and soon the Nazis, began to promote the idea that, every Jew is a “mortal enemy of the German people,” (Modern World History, ch. 16, sec. 5). Following this ideology, Jews were considered targets early on in the war and that policy became …show more content…

This process of targeting “enemies” had many degrees. First it began with the total segregation of Jews from German society (Modern World History, ch. 16). Then, massacres of Jews were initiated, also known as pogroms. (Modern World History, ch. 16) During the pogroms, Jews were being slaughtered and sent to concentration camps, they were also forbidden from attending public places such as the movies and schools. And by 1938, all German Jews were effectively excluded from society. (Modern World History, ch. 16) Shortly after the Jewish ghettos, certain neighborhoods in which Jews were segregated in, Germans began to shoot Jews on sight, however, this strategy did not prove effective, much like other failed strategies to eliminate Jews, and instead the use of concentration camps was in effect. In these concentration camps, millions of Jews were being slaughtered in ways that were not considered humane, ways such as gassing them and as terrible as, burning them alive. The official policy of Jews changed from solely considering Jews as “targets” to mass slaughtering them and resulting in “murdering over 5.5 million Jews” (Modern World History, ch. 16, sec.

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