The Holocaust Case

INTRODUCTION

Sacrifice by Fire

The Holocaust was a time of deliberate persecution and massacre by the Nazis of the Jewish people around Europe from 1933 to 1945. It ended when the Nazi Party (“National Socialist German Worker’s Party”) was overpowered by the Allied powers. The term “Holocaust” is of Greek origin from the word “holokauston” and means “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis called this plan to mass exterminate the Jewish people the “Final Solution.”

Victims

Jewish people seemed to be the main target of the Nazis during this time, but there were other victims such as homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehovan’s Witnesses, Soviet POWs, Polish people and disabled people who were included in this genocide. Those who defied the Nazis or resisted were sent to forced, brutal labour or murdered. 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. The Nazis murdered approximately two-thirds (six million) of all Jews in Europe. 1.1 million children were also killed in the Holocaust.

NAZI BELIEFS

Nazi attitudes towards Jews

In Germany, there were about 500,000 Jews. Many members of the German Workers’ Party in 1919 had been against Jewish people and believed they were the cause of all the problems Germany was then facing. The reason they felt this way was unclear but a few points have been thought of as to why the Nazis felt what they did. Jewish people were of a different religion, and looked and spoke differently to German people. Many people were jealous of the Jews because some were successful and wealthy with many being writers, lawyers and doctors. Interestingly, this blaming of the Jews for problems they had nothing to do with had not been new in Europe as it had been a tradition since the Middle Ages. Not all German people were against the Jews however. Some felt pity towards them and disliked Hitler’s actions against the Jewish people, but were too frightened to speak up for them. Not only Germans, but also foreign countries felt this way.

Persecution of the Jews

500,000 Jewish people were forced to leave German territory when Hitler came into power in 1933. A boycott, ordered by Hitler on April 1 1933, was made to refuse all Jewish-run shops and Jewish doctors and lawyers. Laws were set up to take away the Jews’ rights. These laws were called the Nuremberg Laws and included Jews losing their German citizenship, no longer having the right to vote in elections, and marriages between Jews and non-Jews were illegal. Many other laws were made to persecute the Jews over the years, including excluding them from parks, swimming pools, public buildings and restaurants, banning them from working in government jobs and inheriting land. Jewish doctors were not allowed