Holocaust: Nazi Germany and Holocaust Essay

Submitted By Ashley-Lawrence
Words: 1611
Pages: 7

Six million Jews were persecuted during the Holocaust. This is a number one cannot vision with the naked eye. Families, homes and hopes were destroyed. Not only were the lives of these people taken but so were their souls. Elie weisel remains a very relevant author, especially since Jewish history seems necessary in preventing genocide from happening again. In Night, Elie Wiesel keeps the Holocaust “alive”: as he narrates his experiences of family lost, death of his childhood and questioning of a higher power.
“Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from one generation to the next. Books save lives.” (Laurie Anderson) The finest way to preserve a story is through literature. During World War II, 6 million of the nine million Jews who were living in Europe were killed. (Dawidowicz, 403) Over one million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust, as were approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men. Although there are arguments against the existence of the Holocaust one must dig deeper to find out the truth. Organized states who were led by the Nazi party leader Hitler was the cause of these mass murdering. The persecutions of the Jewish people were carried out in several parts. Jews were first slowly isolated from civil society. The Nuremberg laws were formed by Nazi Germany and introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi party. “The Nuremberg Laws classified people with four German grandparents as "German or kindred blood", though people were classified as Jews if they came from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood" These laws were created against the Jews and prohibited the Jews from mating with Germans.
Not only was this the start to the discrimination of Jews but much more to soon come; the government was on a quest to deplete the Jews. The Government then required Jews to register their properties and “aryanze” their businesses. This meant owners of stores who were Jewish were no longer allowed to own them and most of the Jewish businesses were taken over by non- Jewish Germans who bought the businesses from Nazi’s who sold them at bargain prices. As well as Jewish businesses being taken, Jewish doctors who practiced medicine were also forbidden to treat non-Jews. These steps were taken even farther when the government added special identifying marks to the identity cards of Jewish people. The government marked these cards with a “J” making it easier for Jews to be identified by the police. Hitler also forced every Jewish person to wear a sewn star on their blouse. “ The yellow star? So What? It’s not lethal..” (Weisel,P11) Hitler's bias was not rooted in political or religious concerns alone. He believed the Jewish population was an evil race working to take over the world. He was not interested in converting them or expelling them from Germany. In Hitler's mind, the only tolerable solution to his “Jewish problem” was complete extermination of the Jewish people. The Great Synagogue of Munich was burned down in June 1938. The police arrested all German Jews with police records—which generally meant parking tickets. “Fifteen hundred Jews were sent to concentration camps, brutal prison camps run by the SS, the elite Nazi military organization. During this time, the Nazis also went after Jews in Austria, which had become part of Germany in March. By September, 4,000 Austrian Jews were in concentration camps. The arrested Jews were released only if they agreed to leave the country. In August, the synagogue in Nuremberg was destroyed.” (Barbara C. Bigelow 158) This was the beginning of the shipment of The Jews to concentration camps. Conditions in the Nazi concentration camps were appalling. Prisoners were brought to the camps in rail freight cars. Many prisoners died in transport as the result of severe overcrowding of the