The Holocaust (Essay Sample)

The Holocaust
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The Holocaust
The Holocaust refers to the state-sponsored systematic and bureaucratic persecution and murder of around six million Jews by the Nazi regime together with its collaborators. On assuming power in January 1933, the Nazis had the belief that the Germans were racially superior to the Jews, the latter of whom were taken to be an alien threat to the German racial community (Gilbert, 1986). The population of the Jews in Europe as at this time stood at nine million and above. Owing to the fact that these Jews were living in countries that the Nazi Germany would likely occupy or even influence during the World War II, the Germans together with their collaborators killed two thirds of the Jewish population. It was during this era that the Germany authorities also targeted other groups including the Gypsies, the poles, some Russians and other groups who had been to the Germans “racially inferior”. This random killing was part of what was being referred to as the Final Solution (Bergen, 2003).
As a result of the continued spread of the Nazi tyranny across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators not only persecuted but also continued to murder millions of other individuals. It is approximated that of the entire Soviet prisoners of war, between two and three millions were either murder or died of disease, starvation, maltreatment or neglect (Bergen, 2003). Additionally, the Germans also targeted the non-Polish literati for killing; at the same time deporting vast numbers of Polish and Soviet civilians to their country for forced labor where they would work and consequently die under disgraceful situations.
However, in the final months of the war, the SS guards made attempts to move camp inmates (...