Other Groups Persecuted in the Holocaust Jewish and Hebrew peoples are best known as the targets of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, though many other groups were persecuted. Details of those persecuted were shared in PBS Inside The Nazi State (“Inside the Nazi State”) PBS. 2006; as well as Jewish people, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma Gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled were said to be housed in Auschwitz or killed on cite. Why were these groups targeted? This question is explained on “Victims.” A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust University of South Florida, it is stated that Hitler chose to exterminate millions that did not fit into his ‘Aryan’ master race. Hitler’s ideology …show more content…
In the book: “Overlooked Millions: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust.” By Karen Silverstrim, University of Central Arkansas, the author explains some reasons for the persecution of non-Jews. Three million Poles were executed for nationalist and racist reasons as they were considered a lower race and Hitler’s plan was for the land area of Poland to belong solely to the Germans as some of the territory had been previously held by the German Empire prior to World War I. Many Ukrainians were targeted due to their establishment as a lower race and the fact that Hitler wanted to use the land area of Ukraine to grow crops to support Germanic peoples after the war. Yugoslavians were singled out as Hitler believed the country they occupied rightfully belonged to Germany and they were seen as unfit to inhabit the state. Countries directly connected to Germany were more affected by selections for elimination due to their proximity to the places targeted people were processed. Some classes of people were targeted for complete destruction while others were not, the distinction lies in the ideology of Hitler and why he wanted to kill millions in the first place. Nationalism played a major role in World War II as countries had been introduced to the idea of nation states, wanting homogenous culture race and language. Eugenics was a driving force for the racism of the holocaust as it enforced the idea of an Aryan master race and disparaged other
Finally, many purely hated Jews because they were not Aryan. Germany was one of these countries. Hitler, the leader of Germany, has carried hate for the Jews since early childhood. Primarily, he blamed them for his mother’s death along with him not getting into his dream school, Vienna Art College. Also, they were blamed by Germany for defeat in WWI and as the cause for unemployment. However, mainly Jews were persecuted because of the way they looked. At the time, Hitler wanted a racially pure Germany. He believed that by adapting the Darwin theory of survival of the fittest, he would be able to create a stronger generation and kill those that are impure or disabled.
Although Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust, many other groups were targeted based on racial or political grounds. Other groups that were attacked by the Nazis included LGBTQ individuals, the physically and mentally disabled, Roma(gypsies), Poles, Slavic Peoples, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and members of political opposition groups. These Non-Jewish victims were not considered as victims of the Holocaust. So, why did Adolf Hitler kill 11 million people? First, we need to inspect Hitler’s crazy ideas. Adolf Hitler was the Chancellor of Germany during the Holocaust. He came to power in 1933, when Germany was experiencing financial trouble. Hitler promised the Germans that he would bring them great wealth and he stated that he would make
Hitler, in 1934-1945, believing in the works of Charles Darwin, made concentration camps for the jews. He discriminated against the Jews, and declared The Aryan race to be superior. The killing of the Jews was both out of fear and pride for Hitler. He feared the fact that the Jews might spoil the pureness of the Aryans. He took pride in the fact that his race was superior, and so wanted to maintain his race’s superiority to keep his pride intact.
The main reason why Hitler divided the Jews from Europe was because of race but also because of religion. Hitler believed that Jews and Judaism were dangerous and would take over the world. In Hitler’s Mien Kampf he states, “The Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world.” Hitler really believed that Jews are taught by their religion to dominate the world so he decided he would do everything in his power to prevent that from happening. The Jews
Many victims of the Holocaust, regardless of race, endured the same unethical punishment for having what the Nazi’s believed to be wrong beliefs. Though Jewish people were the main target by the Nazi’s, groups such as homosexuals, Gypsies, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also targeted. Locations that these people were imprisoned in varied from prisons to killing camps. There were multiple concentration camps, but certain ones had a greater importance due to their location, such as Sachsenhausen and Dachau, which were both located in Germany, which was where Hitler wished to rid the Jews from. Many prisoners of these concentration camps suffered the same fate, but it is important to know as many of their stories as possible. Karl-Heinz Kusserow, a Jehovah’s Witness during the Holocaust, faced imprisonment for refusing German authorities, faced hardships of the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, and was released from Dachau in 1945.
Many groups of people were persecuted during the events of World War II. Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals were some of the many victims of cruel and unfair oppression. With no intentions to heil to the Nazis and their ruler, these groups, including numerous others, were imprisoned in concentration camps and punished for their religions, beliefs, and ways of life. Some fell victim to merciless Nazi persecution, while others were murdered almost instantaneously. Many died as prisoners of harsh concentration camps. Upon entering these camps, captives were stripped of their identity and forced into a life of brutal confinement. Jews and gypsies were the main targets of Nazi oppression, but other groups, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals, still died in concentration camps from sicknesses and abusive treatment.
Nearly six million Jews were killed and murdered in what was called the holocaust. In the years between 1933 and 1945, the Jews of Europe were marked for death. Inanition anti-Semitism was given legal sanction. It was directed by Adolf Hitler and managed by Heinne Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Adolf Eichmann. There were many other great crimes and murders, such as the killing of the Armenians by the Turks , but the holocaust stood out as the "only systematic and organized effort by a modern government to destroy a whole race of people." The Germans under Adolf Hitler believed that the Jews were the German troubles and were a threat to the German and Christian values.
The Holocaust was an event that took place during the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Holocaust was carried out by the German Gestapo, its sole purpose was to exterminate all “inferior”races of people. After the Germans’ defeat and the discovery of the concentration camps, the officials that ran these camps were put on trial for their crimes against humanity. However, some of these war criminals ran from their trials and are now being found in their later years. Their age, however, does not change what they had done in their younger years. Though many believe these men should be left alone, these men should be persecuted for what they did to those many innocent people during WWII.
From 1933 to 1945, Germanyś government was led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. During this time, they carried out a method to onslaught all European Jews. Because the Germans placed themselves as the superior people, they decided that Jews would be punished only because of their religion/race. In Hitlerś eyes, the only way for survival was to be a part of the ¨master race¨. The ¨master race¨ was to always stay ¨pure¨ in hope that one day, they would take over the world.
The Jews were not the only people persecuted and exterminated by Hitler and his regime... (Resnick p. 11) Gypsies, homo-sexuals, cripples, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic priests, the terminally ill, and Communists would all fall victims to the hatred and brutality of the Nazis. However, the attributes that made them worthy for elimination, according to Hitler, were all
You were targeted if you were not Aryan, which meant one had to be at least six generations German, blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin, certain facial proportions, able-bodied, athletic, intelligent, and not be part of certain ethnic groups. The Nazis were very against the Gypsies, Poles, and Russians. All for all, the Holocaust was an extremely fatal and history changing time period. About six million Jews were killed along with five million people of other religions. A genocide of this caliber has a lasting effect on society, which is why the Holocaust was one of the twentieth century's greatest tragedies.
A common question asked by many is why was the Jewish community targeted for the Holocaust? According to the holocaust-history website it is said that, the Jewish people were targeted by Adolf Hitler because Hitler believed that the Jews caused the Germans to lose in World War I. Hitler told the German people that the Germans could have won the first war if Germany had not been “stabbed in the back” by the Jewish community and their conspirators. Additionally Hitler also hated the homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses, according to the Holocaust encyclopedia.
Nazis picked majority of their victims after coming into conclusion that they were “racially inferior” to them. The Nazi party believed that they were an enemy and threat to all of Europe. The nomadic gypsies for example, were viewed as foreigners because they were not of German blood. According to the website euvoltion.com, many of the victims were also viewed as a threat in order to create, “the perfect race” for Europe (“Eugenics as Propaganda”). The Nazis were so focused on being “perfect” that it led to being prejudice and raciest towards the people that occupied Germany. At one point it came to even the elimination of the
The German dictator Adolf Hitler said the Jews were to blame for this. The Nazis believed Germans were racially superior and that the Jews were secondary in regard to what they believed in. Although they mostly addressed Jews, they also targeted Roma Gypsies, the disabled and the Slavic community which included Poles and Russians. By 1945, millions of Jews were exterminated as part of what they called the Final Solution. In the early years of the Nazi regime, they established concentration camps originally used to imprison prisoners of war.
The basis of Jewish discrimination also resides in the Holocaust during World War II. The Holocaust was the systematic, brutal persecution of Jews sponsored by the Nazi regime in Germany. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazis, believed that the Germans were of the racially superior Aryan race. Jewish people, who were considered to be racially inferior, were seen as a threat to the German community. (“Introduction to the Holocaust.” 1). In order to cleanse German society of Jews, Hitler proposed the “Final Solution”, which was a plan to exterminate the Jewish population. Concentration camps, forced labor centers, and gassing facilities were soon established by German officials to round up, detain, and annihilate the Jewish population. In total, the Holocaust was responsible for the murder of six million Jews (“Introduction to the Holocaust.” 1). In modern society, Jewish people have been discriminated against because of the assumption that they refer to their treatment in the Holocaust too often. Others even believe the Holocaust to be an exaggerated event or a blown up myth. As a result, Jewish people are considered to be a population that is only