The Horrific Holocaust :: World War II History

The Horrific Holocaust Nearly six million Jews were killed and murdered in what historians have called "The Holocaust." The word 'holocaust' is a conflagration, a great raging fire that consumes in its path all that lives. In the years between 1933 and 1945, the Jews of Europe were marked for total annihilation. Moreover, anti-Semitism was given legal sanction. It was directed by Adolf Hitler and managed by Heinne Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. There were many other great crimes and murders, such as the killing of the Armenians by the Turks, but the Holocaust stood out as the "only systematic and organized effort by a modern government to destroy a whole race of people." The Germans under Adolf Hitler believed that the Jews were the cause of all the German troubles and were a threat to the German and Christian values. Dating back to the first century A.D. the Jews and Christians were always at war. The Jews were considered the murderers of Christ and were therefor denounced from society, rejected by the Conservatives and were not allowed to live in rural areas. As a result, the Jews began living in the cities and supported the liberals. This made the Germans see the Jews as the symbol of all they feared. Following the defeat of the Germans in WW1, the Treaty Of Versailles and the UN resolutions against Germany raised many militaristic voices and formed extreme nationalism. Hitler took advantage of the situation and rose to power in 1933 on a promise to destroy the Treaty Of Versailles that stripped Germany off land. Hitler organized the Gestapo as the only executive branch and secret terror organization of the Nazi police system. In 1935, he made the Nuremberg Laws that forbid Germans to marry Jews or commerce with them. Hitler thought that the Jews were a nationless parasite and were directly related to the Treaty Of Versailles. When Hitler began his move to conquer Europe, he promised that no person of Jewish background would survive. Before the start of the second world war, the Jews of Germany were excluded from public life, forbidden to have sexual relations with non-Jews, boycotted, beaten but allowed to emigrate. When the war was officially declared, emigration ended and 'the final solution to the Jewish problem' came. When Germany took over Poland, the Polish and German Jews were forced into overcrowded Ghettos and employed as slave labour. The Jewish property was seized. Disease and starvation filled the Ghettos. Finally, the Jews were taken to concentration camps in Poland and Germany were they were