Holocaust

 

Holocaust

As Adolf Hitler's Nationalist Socialist regime pursued its policies of Aryan supremacism, the Nazi regime began to eliminate all "undesirable" races: the Jews, the Slavs, gypsies, political and religious dissidents, homosexuals and the disabled. Businesses were looted, targeted populations were deported en masse to concentration camps and, ultimately, 6 million Jews and 5 million "undesirables" lost their lives in a series of targeted exterminations and massacres that still haunts the minds of survivors today.

History/ Background: After Germany's defeat in World War I, the Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to pay huge reparations, which led to massive inflation and economic depression. Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party rose to power in 1933, providing the German people with a scapegoat for the country's woes: the Jews. Hitler instilled the belief that the German Aryan race was ultimately superior to all others and the only way to ensure the Aryan’s lebensraum (room for living) was to eliminate all the inferior and undesirable races : the Jews, Slavs, gypsies, political and religious dissidents, homosexuals and the disabled. In 1935, the Nuremburg Laws were passed which stripped the German Jews of their rights of citizenship and called for their deportation. The first concentration camps were soon established for Jews, communists, and prisoners of war, where slave labor was demanded of the inmates under harsh conditions. On September 1, 1939, the German's started World War II by invading Poland

Dynamics of the Genocide: Many date the beginning of the Holocaust to Kristallnact (the night of broken glass), November 9-10, 1938, when Jewish-owned businesses and synagogues were looted. Massacres and mass deportations to concentration camps began shortly thereafter. Conquests in the early part of World War II brought an even greater number of Jews under German control. These Jews were crammed into ghettos, deprived of rights and property and massacred by elite killing squads. Within 18 months, approximately 1.3 million Jews in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union had been killed. In January 1942, the Nazis formulated "The Final Solution" to exterminate all European Jews. New gassing facilities were constructed in three concentration camps in Poland and two additional death camps were built near the Polish town of Auschwitz. Soon Jews from all over Europe were being forced into cattle cars destined for one of the camps that could gas thousands of Jews a day. Gassing, starvation, or disease killed millions over the next three years. The true magnitude of the genocide, subsequently called the Holocaust, only became known to the world after the camps were liberated by Allied forces in 1945. Within seven years, 6 million Jews and 5 million “undesirables” lost their lives. In 1946, the Nuremburg Tribunal was established to try the perpetrators of the genocide for their crimes. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which provided a working definition for the newly coined term “genocide” and made it a crime under international law, was adopted in 1948. The Fourth Geneva Convention was enacted in 1949, mandating the protection of civilians, in the hands of an enemy or under foreign occupation, during times of war.

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