The Persecution Of The Holocaust

There are so many remarkable people who have gone before us and shaped the world into what it is today. With the passing of yet another Veterans Day, people were reminded of the extraordinary sacrifices made by ordinary men and women who were unfortunate enough to have lived during times when their nations were at war. Many ordinary citizens lost their lives as a result of the war, just as soldiers did. While some survivors simply lived out their post war lives, others survived and influenced the world. One person who survived the atrocities of the Holocaust during World War II and used his experiences to improve social, political, and religious conditions throughout the world, is Elie Wiesel. Through the words of Elie Wiesel, the public can witness the evils of war, keep these memories alive in the collective recall of future generations, and take action upon witnessing injustices of its kind.

As we grow up our parents teach us how to be respectful and very well-mannered. They enforce the importance of saying, “Please, thank you, and excuse me,” when needed. Parents also insist we listen and respect our elders, because they have authority over the world since they have been here the longest. We were raised to comply with the demand of someone who had authority over us. According to Patricia Werhane (1), “In the early1960’s Stanley Milgram undertook his noteworthy study of human obedience to authority. Puzzled by the question of how otherwise decent people could knowingly contribute to the massive genocide of the Holocaust during World War II, Milgram designed an experiment that sought to cause a conflict between one’s willingness to obey authority and one’s personal conscience.”

The Holocaust is well known around the world, and many people do not realize the devastation and the technology that was used in that time. What we knew before was that the Holocaust resulted in the death of six million jews, and was controlled by the Nazi Regime. Adolf Hitler was the dictator of Germany and came up with the Final Solution, a plan to exterminate all the people of Jewish faith or race during World War II. This then brought in the concept of concentration camps. Concentration camps did not just hold Jews captive, they also targeted other groups such as Gypsies, African-Germans, Homosexuals, Atheists, and the physically and the mentally disabled. Now, it is common knowledge that that many people were killed in gas chambers or

The Jewish race lived in a time of hardships in the mid 1900’s as the Nazis began to take over Germany during the well-known era of the Holocaust. “The Nazis, who came to power in Germany on January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community (Children during the Holocaust).” Therefore, the Nazis began genocide with intentions to kill off all of the Jewish people under the command of Adolf Hitler. Many people were brutally tortured and murdered during this tragic time in Western Europe. However, Jewish children during the Holocaust were the most targeted and tortured groups of individuals.

Eleven million innocent people died and many did not know what they did or why it was happening to them (Rice 11). The Holocaust happened because of the Germans after World War 2 thought that the reason that their economy was falling down was because of Jewish people. The Holocaust followed the Ladder of Prejudice is a started with speech and moved its way up to “The Final Solution” also known as extermination. Hitler did not start with killing Jews. He killed Jews,Gypsies,homosexuals and many more religions or cultural people and Hitler also sent people to concentration camps if they spoke against the Government, then he moved to the Ladder of Prejudice, he used discrimination, physical attack and, extermination.

The Holocaust was an event that took place from 1933 to 1945 in Germany. During this time, Adolf Hitler was in charge, resulting in the prejudice actions that are well written in history. Facing economic, social, and political oppression, thousands of German Jews wanted to flee, but found few countries wanting to take them in. Eventually, under Hitler’s leadership, some 6 million Jews were murdered during World War II. In this time period the Nazi’s waged a war against the Jews and other races that they considered to be unequal in race and superiority to the German race. The actions that took place during the Holocaust were seen as the “Final Solution”. The Holocaust was one of the darkest times in history, and can be traced to the rising of Hitler, “An egomaniac with delusions of grandeur, and power” (Steinberg 240). The Holocaust resulted in the deaths of many Jews and other non- Germans, until they were liberated by America.

The Holocaust was a tragic period in the world where Germans persecuted anyone they felt was inferior to them, mostly Jews. Millions of lives were persecuted for nothing. It has been about 80 years since the Holocaust. Nazi’s who participated in the Holocaust are now almost a decade old. But, that doesn’t exempt them from their crimes. Survivors and souls that have died need justice. Getting older shouldn’t exempt them from the crimes they have committed, if persecution of these criminals isn’t remembered, then it isn’t really justice, and a single person is responsible for their actions they know right from wrong, and they knew what they were doing was wrong.

Genocide is the destruction of an ethnic, racial, or religious group. The most famous genocide, conducted by the Germans, is the extermination of the Jewish population known as the Holocaust. There are other genocides such as the Armenian or Darfur genocide, but the Holocaust is the one talked about and studied the most around the world today. Museums exist in Washington D.C, Los Angeles, and parts of Europe that focus primarily on this dark time in history. Vast amounts of books, movies, and documents concentrate on the Holocaust. Why is this chapter, between 1939 and 1945, discussed and examined? The answer lies within people who experienced the Holocaust such as Elie Wiesel, Jay Frankston, and Franks Shatz. These men have gone through hell and back, but they believe in one thing. That is, the notion of never again. The goal is to educate future generations on what really happened, so history does not repeat itself. Never again should people of any race, religion, or ethnicity, go through the horrific past of the Holocaust. In their writing, Wiesel, Frankston, and Shatz do a great job using pathos, logos, and ethos to convey their message of never again for future generations.

Nowadays, people tend to forget the morality of human beings. For instance, the people in today’s world are attracted to greed or power letting their mind and body rot them. However, are we doing a right in letting people like that win? It might not seem much or anything, but as history has shown us otherwise with World War II. Like letting a tyrant leader like Adolf Hitler take over different countries and bring in what is believed the most horrific discrimination ever known. Therefore, it is right to agree with Elie Wiesel a former target of the Nazi Final Solution that the moment race and religion are involved then that soon must become the center of the universe’s attention.

Imagine walking through a rusted metal fence, a lingering smell in the air that never really went away. You look to your left and see Nazi soldiers beating a man in a worn out striped suit. You look to your right and see a bulldozer moving piles of pale bodies from one building to another. This was nothing out of the ordinary during the troubling times of World War II, and with this, there came genocide. This horrifying act was shown through the Holocaust and concentration camps; one of the most notorious being Auschwitz. Genocide is the intent to terminate an entire race or religion. For example, Hitler had a plan of genocide towards the Jews. Not only were the people who were born from Jewish descent were tortured, but the people who also

The Holocaust was a persecution of Jews implemented by the Nazi regime in Germany. Many Jews were stripped away from their homes and put into concentration camps. In many of these camps, they were forced to work as slaves and many times executed. In the book, Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, it discusses his hardships in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Levi 's main focus for his book is his survival during the camp and how one can survive the brutalities of the Nazis.

There were many groups of people, other than the Jews, that were victims of persecution and murdered by the Nazis. The groups affected by the Holocaust were the Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, political dissidents and dissenting clergy, people with physical or mental disabilities, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals. According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, There is evidence as early as 1919 that Hitler had a strong hatred of Jews. As Chancellor and later Reichsfuhrer, Hitler translated these intense feelings into a series of policies and statutes which progressively eroded the rights of German Jews from 1933-1939 (“Victims”).

“There was no choice.” Schindler said these words, reflecting on his moral decision to save over 1000 Jews from death and labor camps. He knew there was a right way, and also a wrong way, morally, and that he had no other option. For other industrialists in Schindler 's position, it wasn 't as easy a choice. During the Third Reich, German industrialists had a moral decision to make: whether to cooperate with the Nazis and profit from the persecution of Jews, or to resist and risk their lives and fortune. The Nazis created laws in order to persecute Jews, which contributed to the industrialists’ decisions. In 1939, Jews were made to wear identifying stars, and they were forced to live together in isolated ghettos. In the next few years, more laws were passed inflicting pain and cruelty upon Jews. Then, the Nazis moved beyond persecution, and threatened Jewish people’s jobs and economic stability. First, Jews had to register their property, and then, their privately-owned businesses were sold to non-Jewish German industrialists at a very low price. When their companies were sold, all of their managers and employees were kicked out. Later, once Jews were forced to work in non-Jewish Germans’ factories, a rule was passed in the spring of 1940, declaring that the wages of all the Jewish workers went directly to the SS, instead of the actual workers. Soon after, everyone except for “work-essential” Jews had to leave the city, causing every Jew to desperately try to find

The Holocaust was one of the most horrible and dreaded events in history. Millions of Jews were killed, leaving many families devastated and hopeless. With the goal of racial purity, Adolf Hitler- along with many other Germans believed the Jews caused the defeat of their country, and led the Nazis to the elimination of Jews. For this reason, “Even in the early 21st century, the legacy of the Holocaust endures…as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day” (The Holocaust). Later, Hitler organized concentration camps, where mass transports of Jews from ghettoes were brought and typically killed also. However, the fortunate Jews that were not killed still had many restrictions on their

The Germans claim that the German Nazi government had no Final Solution policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas chambers to mass murder Jews, and the actual number of Jews killed was significantly lower than the historically accepted figure of 5 to 6 million.