Classical Argument
In a span of twelve years there were 6 million Jews dead, 1.5 million of whom were children! In the infamous Holocaust of Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany, the Jews were persecuted and systematically annihilated from January 30, 1933 up to May 8, 1945. The Holocaust was the greatest tragedy to befall humankind, a heinous act inflicted by Hitler and the Nazis against the Jews. All the atrocities committed against the Jews by the Germans were meant to wipe the entire Jewry in Europe.
Germany suffered hugely after a humiliating defeat in World War I. In the Treaty of Versailles, Germany lost most of its pre-war territories and tremendously weakened its military. The treaty also charged Germany of war crimes and demanded it to pay damages to the Allied Powers. Post-war Germany experienced great political and economic devastation. Hitler and his Nazi Party considered the Jews as the cause of Germany’s misfortunes. The Nazis likewise had a superior race theory, where they believed their race was born to rule as they were strong and able. The Jews on the other hand were weak and racially inferior and therefore must be eliminated. When Hitler and the Nazis gained full government control they began their plan to annihilate the entire Jewish race. They enacted the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. The laws excluded and restricted the Jews from participation in society; burned books authored by Jews, kicked them out of schools, prohibited the practice of their professions, closed down their businesses, confiscated their properties and barred them from public affairs. The Jews attempted to flee and immigrate. It proved difficult because of legal emigration quotas in other countries. The Jews were doomed. The Nazis became more violent towards the Jews by November of 1938, when they ransacked homes, destroyed buildings and set on fire their synagogues. They were beaten, arrested, killed and thrown in concentration camps. That was the Night of Broken Glass or Kristallnacht. In German-occupied Poland, the Nazis built death camps for the Jews, deprived them of food and water. They were cramped and the facilities were unsanitary and totally unfit for humans.
Many Jews died of starvation. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, it marked the beginning of what Hitler called the Final Solution. Mobile killing groups rounded up the Jews, made them dug pits, had them line up, stripped and killed them. They fell into the pits which served as their mass graves. These mass murders of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia grimly raised the statistics to 1.3 million Jews deaths. In 1942, the Nazis stepped up their extermination campaign into a full-scale and intensive operation. They put up death camps in Poland where the Jews were brutally gassed up to death. 3.5 million Jews died in these camps. The young and the healthy were forced to labor in factories, in long punishing hours without enough food and shelter. Others were made to march to concentration camps. The sick and the starving were shot. Thousands died in forced labor and fourth of a million in death marches.
The treatment of the Jews by the Germans was no different from the harsh discrimination by Whites against the Blacks, whether that was in Africa or America. The Blacks were just as starved with opportunities, stripped of their dignity, denied of impartial justice and likewise were beaten and killed. The similarities ended there, however. The entire Black population was not threatened as much as the whole Jewry, that in later years the Blacks were able to press for equal rights and assert their basic freedoms. The statistics and brutality of deaths as well as the destruction of Jewish communities would make it harder and longer for the Jews to rise from the ashes.
The Holocaust was one man’s insanity the world will long remember and perhaps never forget. Such would be good, so that we may learn from the lessons of the past.
Works Cited
Jewish Virtual Library. “History of the Holocaust – An Introduction.” Copyright 2008.
The American-Israel Cooperative Enterprise.
30 January 2008 <http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/source/Holocaust/history.html>.
United Human Rights Council. “History of the Holocaust 1938-1945 6,000,000 Deaths.”
30 January 2008 http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/history_of_the_holocaust.htm
