The Holocaust: Adolf Hitler's Aryan Race

The Holocaust was organized by Adolf Hitler and it targeted Jewish people. In the beginning, the Nazis only targeted their political opponents such as Communists or Social Democrats. These were the people that were sent to the first concentration camp. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 labeled anyone with three or four grandparents as a Jew and those with two Jewish grandparents as half-breeds. Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution (“History”). The Nazis portrayed Jews as a race and not a religious group. Religious anti-Semitism could be resolved by conversion, political anti-Semitism by expulsion. Ultimately, the logic of Nazi racial anti-Semitism led to annihilation (Berenbaum 1). “Kristallnacht” was a night in November of

The Nazis came into power on the 30th of January, 1933. By that year Hitler had total control over the country. Hitler possessed a dominant presence and was able to get people to listen to him, he was very persuasive in making the Germans believe that the Jews were the problem of Germany. He vowed to use his skill in public speaking and his position in authority and gain political power the right way. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler believed that Jews were an inferior race, alien threat to German racial purity. Anti- Semites such like Hitler believed that the reason for their country’s loss in 1918 were the Jews. Many Jews were killed during the Holocaust, the Nazis tried to keep this operation a secret but was made virtually impossible due to the amount of

Racism is the belief centralized in the idea that a certain race is considered to be superior or inferior to another. It is a belief that labels a person’s worth, social, and moral traits based on his/her inherent nationality or biological features (Anti-Defamation League). This mentality has been around for centuries and still exists today. There are several theories about how such came about and why it continues to thrive. Racism can only be thoroughly studied by tracing its roots and history. Knowing the relevant events prior to and after the peak of a racist manifestation in the society during a certain period of time is one of the keys in understanding the nature of racism. It is important to note that the attempt to understand the nature of racism is not necessarily equivalent to the attempt to justify it. The main purpose of racism studies should be directed towards the attempt to lessen, if not eradicate such mentality. The Holocaust, the infamous racist manifestation which took place in Germany is a great example of what happens when racism is not stopped or prevented. Taking such infamous racist events in history under an extensive look, reveals some of the major arguments/concepts/causes of racism that could lead to understanding racism as a whole and thereby help address this issue in the modern-day society. Extreme ethnocentrism, rivalry for supremacy, and people lacking information are some of the causes of racism deemed to be important in studying

insane to torture the human race that way. Others praise him for attempting to exterminate

When the war ended in 1945, millions of Jews had perished. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime had almost entirely wiped out a single race of people in what would become known as the Holocaust. However, the Jews were not the only people who had been stripped of their dignity and killed. There were other groups who the Nazi’s persecuted against. The Roma, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Political Prisoners were all systematically gathered up and killed. When the Holocaust gets mentioned, many don't talk about the other millions of innocent people who were murdered alongside the Jews. Many don't see these people as victims at all. The number of people murdered during the Holocaust reaches close to eleven million people. “Contragenics” is the term used to talk about all of the groups who were murdered under the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. These innocent lives were lost in the Holocaust, and while history hasn’t forgotten, humanity has.

Hitler's first plan was to demean the Jews' reputation. The Jews, who in 1933 numbered 500,000 in Germany which was less than one percent of the population ( The Holocaust), were blamed for economic depression and Germany's defeat in World War I. New laws were created that forced Jews to give their civil service jobs, university and law positions, and other aspects of the public life. Jewish businesses were boycotted in April 1933 ( The Holocaust). Also that year, the first concentration camps opened to begin in the destruction of the Jews, and they were expected to wear a symbol to differentiate themselves, a yellow Star of David. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws took all personal identity from the Jews and defined them by their religion and heritage alone.

Hitler had an invincible ally without whom he could have never flourished. His ally was the world that chose to endure silence as Germany kept challenging the boundaries of the universal acceptance for its evil actions. The Holocaust didn't begin with crematoria. Hitler moved gradually, carefully intensifying his anti-Jewish guidelines. In 1935, he approved the Nuremberg Laws, depriving all Jews of German citizenship. Jews were then streaked from the businesses, their stores were rejected, they were singled out for unusual taxes, and they were forbidden from "intermarrying" with

Before the start of the second word war, the Jews of Germany were excluded from public life, forbidden to have sexual relations with non-Jews, boycotted, beaten but aloud to immigrate. When the war was officially declared, immigration ended and 'the final solution to the Jewish problem' came. When Germany took over Poland, the polish and German Jews were forced into over crowed gettos and employed as slave labor. The Jewish property was seized. Disease and starvation filled the gettos. Finally, the Jews were taken to concentration camps in Poland and Germany where they were murdered and killed in poisonous gas chambers in Auschwitz and many other camps despite the harsh treatment of the Jews, not many German people opposed this.

Hitler’s rise to power came on January 20, 1933 when he was announced chancellor of Germany and then anointing himself Fuhrer. Hitler strongly believed that the Jews were responsible for Germany’s defeat in 1918, even writing in a memoir that a European war would cause the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany (History.com). Hitler was also obsessed with the Aryan race, which he believed was “pure”. These two ideas would become the main cause for this genocide. The first ever concentration camp, Dachau, opened March 1933 and at first only imprisoned political enemies to the Nazi party. Over the next few years the Jews would be persecuted and forced out of work by the Nazi party. Then in November of 1938 things escalated in what is known as the “night of broken glass”, where German synagogues were burned down and Jewish owned shops were destroyed (History). Causing the death of hundreds Jews and the arrest of thousands. In the start of the war, September 1939, the Germans have just started to occupy Poland. During this time the Germans were seizing Jewish owed land and business and had tens of thousands of Jews taken out of their homes and moved into ghettos. Starting in 1941 the Germans began moving the people in the ghettos into concentration camps and on March 17 1942 the first mass gassing happened at the camp of Belzec. Shortly after this five more camps were built in Poland the most notorious being Auschwitz (History.com). This camp by the end of the war will have killed more than 2 million people, and in total the holocaust had killed roughly 6 million Jews, 3 million soviet prisoners of war, 2 million soviet civilians, 1 million polish civilians, and 1 million Yugoslav civilians (the

Beginning when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in late January of 1933 and concluding with the official end of World War II in May of 1945, the Holocaust was a period when Jews residing in the German Empire and German-occupied territories were persecuted and harshly murdered. The individuals of the Third Reich were not the first to have anti-Semitic prejudices; however, they were the first to take this type of racism and accomplish massacres on such a grand-scale. The successful killing of approximately six million Jews during the Holocaust can be best explained through the actions of ordinary German citizens as a result of convincing propaganda.

The word that describes the Holocaust the best is power. During this terrible time period, Hitler and the Nazis took control and the Jews didn’t have a say in anything. One way the Nazis had all the power was by the persuading speeches they gave. They lied and told different groups of people what they wanted to hear. To some, they explained how the Jews were the reason Germany lost the war. To others, they blamed the bad economy on Jews. By turning so many people against Jews, the Nazis slowly began to take over and have too much power.

Ghettos were set up to isolate the Jews from the rest of the population. At least 1,000 ghettos were built in Poland and the Soviet Union alone. These ghettos were “protected” by barbed wire fences and tall brick walls which kept the Jews in. Tens of thousands of western European Jews were deported to these ghettos. The first ghetto, Piotrków Trybunalski, was opened in October 1939. Jews living in the ghettos were ordered to wear badges or armbands of a yellow Star of David and many Jews were demanded that they do forced labor for the German Reich. Jewish councils called the Judenraete were designated by the Nazis to lead everyday life in the ghettos. The ghettos were overcrowded and suffered from disease and starvation, leading to the deaths of thousands of Jews, particularly orphaned children. Food, medicine, weapons, and intelligence were smuggled into the ghettos. The largest ghetto was the Warsaw ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, where more than 400,000 Jews were enclosed in just 1.3 square miles. In 1943, the Warsaw ghetto revolt occurred. In this revolt, Jews held out for almost four weeks even though they were surrounded by German soldiers and police, and weren’t armed very well. This revolt was one among many revolts that took place in ghettos. Jews that managed to escape from the ghettos many times joined the partisans, which were a

The Holocaust is most often associated with the slaughter of millions of Jewish people. However they are not the only ones to be brutally murdered. In order to fit in with Hitler’s “Aryan Race”, one must be blond, blue eyed, German and essentially “perfect.” For Hitler, that meant that people with disabilities were to be slaughtered as well as sterilized. Some of the first to be exterminated are the mentally, physically and emotionally disabled. He used propaganda to make the Germans “okay” with it. Parents were told their children passed away from their disabilities. When he actually had them experimented on, murdered, and wiped off the face of the earth. He wanted to “clean” the gene pool.

Life in the ghettos was constantly crowded and was hardly suitable living conditions. The Germans would not let up, they “...deliberately tried to starve residents by allowing them to purchase only a small amount of bread, potatoes, and fat.”(Possible citation) People lacked adequate clothing and could barely make it through most days. Being locked up in these small areas without proper living spaces, nor conditions really takes a toll on mindset and sanity. Many ghettos were destroyed during this time reasons know and unknown. At one point, “...the Nazis decide to destroy the Lodz ghetto. By then, Lodz is the last remaining ghetto in Poland, with a population of about 75,000 Jews.” (Citation) Some ghettos attempted to even revolt against the Germans causing the burning of the Warsaw ghetto of 1943. Nazi concentration camps were so cruel no one can begin to put themselves in their shoes nor feel empathy for these victims. Jewish civilians were worked to the ground constantly. Prisoners were color coded for easy identification of their background, for example purple for witnesses and pink for homosexuals. These prisoners were starved and left in the cold to die. German officers did not care enough to give proper care to sick

Adolf Hitler, and his Nazi Party that followed him, began persecuting Jews in 1933. Adolf Hitler, the mastermind behind the Holocaust, was an anti-semitic man who believed in a superior Arian German race. Hitler's rise to power was just the beginning of a series of events that almost led to the complete annihilation of many countries' Jewish population. First, laws that limited the Jew's rights were applied. Next, their valuables were taken from their possession, and then the innocent people were forced into cramped ghettos lined with barbwire. According to Sally Marks, “the term holocaust is derived from the Greek language and literally means 'a sacrifice totally consumed by fire'.” (1) Living up to its definition, during the Holocaust many Jews were burned in the fiery mouths of the crematoriums. The impact of the segregational laws as well as being forced into ghettos were only the beginning of the inhumane crimes the Jews were subjected to during the Holocaust.