The Holocaust

The Holocaust is the word used to describe the mass killing of Jews during the Second World War under the orders of the Nazi ruler Adolf Hitler. It is important to understand that Jewish persecution was not started by Hitler himself nor Nazis per se but it is much more ancient, it really comes since the Roman Empire. With the rise of Hitler after the death of Germany's president in 1934 a new persecution against Jews would start. Hitler had two main reasons of why he started this antisemitism campaign. One of these was the fact that he had served the Germany army during the Great War and mainly he, as well as a lot of people, blamed Jews for the lost of the war. The other reason for this was his obsession with the superiority of a pure German race, the Aryan race. He thought this superior race needed space for living and expanding territory.

When the Nazi tool power before Hitler, persecution was done to political opposition, specially Communists. This led to the creation of the first concentration camps. But when Hitler took power Germany started a compete "Aryanization" which started with big political persecution to Jews, the government would liquidate Jew companies and would steel clients from Jewish doctors or lawyers. Really unjust laws where created starting with the Nuremberg Laws, which practically stated who would be considered a Jew and what where the consequences of this. All of this disrupted in "The Night of the Broken Glass" when German synagogues where burned and windows of Jewish stores where smashed. This big outbreak led to German authorities to start killing and arresting Jews.

In 1939 German army took over the Western half of Poland and persecution was worst than ever. Tens of thousands of Jews were being sent into ghettos after having all their goods confiscated. Ghettos where small captive cities governed by a Jewish council but with the worst living standards possible and with no real way of managing, big rates of unemployment, poverty, hunger and overpopulation made almost impossible to survive. At the same time a pilot program for the Holocaust was starting, it was called the Euthanasia Program. This consisted in the killing of around 70,000 handicap or disabled men or women by the use of mortal gas. The program was shut off after a few years because of the discontent of religious Germans but the killing continued in secrecy.

With the expansion of the German territory more and more Jews started to arrive in Polish ghettos. So in 1941 a huge transportation of people from the ghettos to concentration camps started. Concentration camps where killing camps where huge executions where done through mas gassing. People not only died because of this in concentration camps, excessive and inhuman jobs as well as starvation was another way of murder. Around 12,000 Jews were killed daily. Each day German forces where closer to defeat and this made things worst, bigger transportation of people underwent with the intention of moving prisoners before enemies could get to the respective concentration camp. This made living standards in the remaining concentration camps even worst, bigger overpopulation and nor resources nor supplies could get in easy so starvation would get worst. This continued until German surrendered.

The holocaust was one of the biggest genocides throughout the entire human history but its historical importance is clear. It opened the worlds eyes and changed human ideologies towards any kind of racism and discrimination. Although the world is no where near the complete disappearance of these two social problems big advancements have been done and the world now share the idea of the importance of fighting against them, this is in part thanks to the Holocaust.

Sources:

• "The Holocaust." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 07 June 2015.