Holocaust Essay #2 (Essay Sample)

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4th December 2014
Holocaust
Sometimes, events happen in the worlds that raise so many ethical and humanitarian questions, which serve as a precedent to obtain lessons from. These events, mostly the infamous ones, tend to offer an insight into the unlimited potential of human capabilities. Of all the bad ones, arguably the most infamous of them all was the Holocaust. It was an event that made the whole world stands on its feet. It can be defined as the systematic, continuous mass execution of anti Semitic people, especially the Jews in Germany, during the time of the Nazi rule under Adolf Hitler, and its collaborators.
The main focus of this execution was the Jews; however, other minority groups were also involved, such as the Poles, the homosexuals and the people with various disabilities ranging from physical to genetic disabilities. However, the number of those executed from these minority groups constituted a very small percentage of the holocaust since it centered mainly on the Jews. The societal disintegration of Germany onto the lead up to the holocaust was gradual, steady and continuous, but it became more fervent between 1933 to 1945.It was a shocking, sad and shameful realization that during the whole twelve years that this was happening, the world stood aside and watched without doing anything about it. The holocaust had some reason to start, consequences and significance, as we are going to see.
Jews in Germany had lived there for very many generations, and had come to know of it as their only home. The anti-Semitic perceptions had existed throughout Europe way back before this time. However, it became the main agenda in Germany after Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany through the Nazi party (Bergen, 52). The main mission for him and his party was to develop a pure Aryan, or German race. In order to do this, he had to come up with a way in which to strengthen the Germans’ belief in it. He therefore saw the Jews as a clear scapegoat. By this time, the Jews in Germany had infiltrated all the sectors of the German economy, from the government, educational, professional as well as social aspects. The Nazi, looking for absolute power, first made the country a dictatorial government .Secondly, in order to consolidate its power, decided to reign in the Jews. Hitler claimed that they were the reason for the problems facing Germany at that time.
It was upon such kinds of propaganda that he managed to turn the whole German population against the Jews. The Jews lost their jobs, then their property, their freedom, and then their security. The Nazi government then passed the Nuremberg law that ensured the Jews were stripped of their German nationality (Gitlin, 80). They were therefore seen as foreigners of a lesser race. It must be remembered that it was during this time as well that Hitler and his Nazi government also executed everyone who was deemed an enemy of the state and those whose practices were seen as against the societal norms of the German people. These ranged from the gays, the Jehovah witnesses, the Russians and the gypsies.
Those with deformities of the mind, body and genes were also targeted for sterilization in order to come up with a perfect race. Hitler focused on the young German kids, who were brought up with doctrines of anti-Semitism and therefore a deep hatred for the Jews. The Jews were being expelled from Germany in large numbers. This prompted a certain Jew in Poland, to assassinate an assistant ambassador, which resulted into what is called The Night of the Broken Glass (Brenner, 135). It was the perfect excuse, which resulted to the outbreak of violence against Jews in Germany.
The Nazi killing units as well as members of the public tortured and killed Jews. Most were taken to the concentration camps that had been built by Hitler for this purpose. Jews were made the main targets. They started getting killed in the streets as well as by shooting squads set up by Hitler for this purpose. He still saw this type of killing as too slow and therefore ordered for the transportation of all the Jews to camps that had been built for this. His main intention was to exterminate the Jewish race. To kill as many Jews as quickly as possible, through gas chambers. The holocaust had just begun. By the time of its ending, about six million Jews and five million other minor groups will have been killed by the Nazi extremists, diseases or starvation.
The consequences of the holocaust were numerous. The Nazi atrocities became clearer once they had been defeated and the death camps opened by the Russian and other allied forces. There was a cultural void in Europe as a result of the sudden large scale demise of the Jewish population from the holocaust. From the holocaust epicenter in Germany, to the pro-Nazi neighbors such as Lithuania, Romania and some parts of Ukraine lost the Jewish culture completely (Gitlin, 72). For example in Poland, the Hasidic poetry, music, and dressing were lost with the loss of its people, and now can only be found in traces and from the museum archives.
This was a complete shadow of its former self, where Poland was the Jewish community’s most vibrant The schools, churches, and the general way of life that they practiced was essentially left vacant and deserted hence creating this cultural void. It essentially destroyed society. The perpetrators of the holocaust were followed up and arrested and executed on various counts of crime. Hitler himself, committed suicide once he lost the war and felt that his enemies were fast closing down on him (Fischel, 31). There were also a very large number of Jewish refugees seeking asylum throughout the world. Some returned back to Israel, while most of the European countries refused adjusting their immigration capacities to accommodate these refugees. Only the Dominican Republic was willing to alter its immigration rules. There emotional effect on the survivors was tremendous. Many of the survivors suffered long term depression as a result of these experiences, and most feared going back to the places they once called home, due to the scare of these anti-Semitic reactions.
They instead preferred staying in refugee camps, most of which were small and overcrowded, resulting to poor living conditions, spread of diseases and suffering. Those who returned to their homes, such as the ones in Poland, were faced with violent retaliatory attacks since the attackers wanted possession of the Jewish property. It gave rise to various views as to the reasons the holocaust occurred, mainly based on theology (Godfrey, 141). With some arguing out that it was a punishment from god for the sins the Jews were committing. Whether this was true or not still remains open to debate, since no one knows clearly. It resulted to the formation of the state of Israel, to which the Jewish refugees eventually settled into.
The significance of the holocaust is more like a combination of the long-term consequences and lessons learnt from the holocaust. It was after the death camps were opened that the real extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazis was realized (Bauer, 32). This acted as an eye opener for the world never to personify the events occurring somewhere. Therefore, it was seen as a crime for the world to watch people die and do nothing about it. It was noted t...