The Holocaust Case
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The Holocaust
Many people lived happy lives in Germany in the early 1900s.The happiness soon faded after the persecution of the Jewish race began. An estimated 11 million people were killed in the Holocaust; nearly 6 million of these people were Jews. An estimated 1.1 children were also killed. Those numbers lead many people to ask the question, “What was the Holocaust? According to Holocaust facts many people can find the information just from what the word, “Holocaust” means: “The term Holocaust, originally from the Greek word holokauston, which means sacrifice by fire. The Hebrew word Shoah, which means, devastation, ruin or waste, is also used for this genocide.”
Jews in Prewar Germany
A close total of nine million Jews lived in Germany and the other countries that would later be under German occupation during World War II. By the end of the war every two out of three Jews would be dead. In Germany alone in 1933, close to 500,000 Jews lived there. Some of these Jews held important jobs in government and worked in fine universities across Germany.
The largest Jewish populations were concentrated in Eastern Europe; they lived in predominantly Jewish towns in villages, called shtells. In these shtells Jews spoke their
own language, Yiddish, the language combined elements of Hebrew and German. Though younger Jews in larger towns adopted more modern traditions, the older Jews dressed to the old Jewish traditions. While in Western Europe, the Jews adopted the cultures of their non-Jewish neighbors(UnitedMuseum ).
Nazi rule
As quoted from History…Holocaust, On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party, was named Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg after the Nazi party won a significant percentage of the vote in the elections of 1932.Nazi ideology was based on Charles Darwins theory of evolution. The Nazis considered themselves the strongest and fittest race, who were destined to rule, while the Jews were weak and inferior to them and must be whipped out to preserve their perfect “Aryan” race.
After Adolf Hitler was inducted into office in January of 1933, he quickly moved to turn Germany into a one-party dictatorship. He convinced his cabinet to end individual freedoms and declare a state of emergency. With the loss of individual privacy, officials could read peoples mail, listen in on telephone conversations, and search homes with no warrant.
On the first of April in 1933, the first Nazi organized anti-Semitic action occurred: a boycott of Jewish businesses. The Star of David, a six pointed star used in Jewish faith, was painted in black and yellow across Jewish businesses. They posted signs reading “Dont buy from Jews” and “the Jews are our misfortune.” The boycott was non successful and lasted only a day
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On the night of May 10, 1933, the Nazis raided hundreds of libraries and book stores across Germany. Throwing the books of Jewish and non-Jewish writers into huge bonfires destroying over 25,000 books. Anyones ideas who were different from the Nazis should not be read. Before the end of July 1933, all political parties but the Nazi party were dismantled; membership of the Nazi party increases to 2.5 million in 1935 , and by 1945 8.5 million(United…Museum ).
“In 1943, president von Hindenberg died and Hitler became funrer, or absolute dictator, of Germany”(Stadler 159c).By the end of 1934, Hitler had all of Germany in the palm of his hand, and his campaign against Jews was in full swing. The Nazi party proclaimed Jews were tainting Germanys pure society. They portrayed Jews as evil and cowardly, and Germans as hardworking and courageous. Nazis claimed the Jews had weakened the German economy and culture(History…Introduction ).
At the annual Nazi party in Nuremberg in 1935, the Nazis introduced new laws based upon Nazi ideology. These laws denied Jews Reich( the German empire) citizenship and to marry or have sexual relations with person of “German or German related blood.”
These laws became known as the Nuremberg Laws, they did not define a person as a “Jew” based on said persons religious beliefs. These laws defined Jews as any person who had three or four Jewish grandparents. Even people with Jewish grandparents who had converted to Christianity were still defined as Jews(United…Museum ).People of only half-Jewish decent were considered Jewish if they belonged to the Jewish religion or were married to a Jewish person. All other half Jews or Jews with only one Jewish
grandparent were labeled mischlinge, or half breeds(Hilberg ). According to Rossel, the Nuremburg Laws classified Jews as “subjects” rather than “citizens”(300).
Curfews were placed on Jews in 1935. For Austrian and German Jewish teenagers and children, life became harder. Previously banded from museums, public playgrounds, and swimming pools, they were now expelled from all public schools for simply being Jewish. At all loss of all hope, many Jews committed suicide.
On November 9, 1938, the Nazis broke out in violence against Jews for two days. The out break was due to an assassination of a German official in Paris by a Jewish teenager. Within the two days, over 7,000 Jewish businesses were vandalized, dozens of Jews murdered, and over 250 synagogues were burned, all of this underwent while police and firefighters stood by and watched. This became known as Kristallnact, the “Night of Broken Glass”, for all the glass scattered in the streets from Jewish shop windows(United…Museum). This “Night of Broken Glass” was a signal to Jews in Austria and Germany to seek refuge from persecution in other countries. Several hundred thousand were able to make it out, while a similar number, who were unable to leave, stayed to face an uncertain fate(Hilberg).
After the “Night of Broken Glass” over 30,000 Jewish men were arrested for the “crime” of being Jewish, some Jewish women were also arrested. Jewish owned businesses were no longer allowed to reopen unless they were managed by non-Jews. As Hilberg explains, the transfer of Jewish owned businesses to German owners was called “Aryanization.”
Quoted from United…Museum; “In 1939, the German government conducted a
census of