The Holocaust and Human Nature

There are less than eighty Holocaust survivors today. As they pass away we need to tell their stories so we know the truth. We want to remember them and never forget what they did. Throughout this paper, we will examine the rise, fall and the impact of the Holocaust. We want to be thankful that there some survivors to bring us there stories so we can prevent this event from happening again. Let’s not have this event happen again.

The first topic we will be looking at is the cultural background.

This background was Nazism which means the political principles of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (dictionary.com). Since the background was Nazism which is German it would make sense that the Holocaust would be in parts of Germany and in parts of Europe. Germany was ruled by the Nazi Party for twelve years before the Holocaust (impact of the Holocaust).

There were a couple of important people involved in making the Holocaust a thing, the first important person was Hitler without him the Holocaust may not have happened. Hitler had all the master plans of killing the Jews. The other two were the Nazi Germans and the Jews. The Jews were a big part of the Holocaust. The Jews were a big part because Hitler was mad at the Jews because they did not let him go to there art school so he wanted all of them gone. He believes that since he was not a Jew they did not want him at there school.

The Holocaust started by Hitler being choose to be the leader of Germany on August 2, 1934.

Hitler ran twice to become the leader of Germany. He lost once but then he ran again and won in 1934. Nothing big happend until December 18, 1938, and that was Hitler stripped the German Jews of all of their rights. From there it never got better it only got worse. On January 1 in 1940 Hitler is back at it with the Jews. He is now forcing them into the ghettos. On the same day, he put the German Jews into concentration camps. In overtime of the Holocaust, eighty to eighty-five percent of the Jewish population died (timetoast.com 2018).

The Nazies would beat the Jews until there was blood running down there faces and their heads. John Lawrence was a victim of the Holocaust, his story is sad. John was 16 years old when he was arrested on Easter in 1938. He was beaten with the butt of a gun. They also made him lay under the spring of a mattress and four men jumped on the bed while he was under it. It is not over, he was stripped of his clothes and held him out the window and threaten to drop him (Children of the Holocaust page.10).

In 1938, the nazies started to take people in to the Ghettos. There living conditions were horrible. In the Ghettos there were too many people and a shortage of hunger. Hundreds of thousands of the Jews would die of a disease. Gerda Weissmann Klein was a Jewish child , we do not know how old he was when this happend but he was a kid. Gerda’s mother through an extravagant birthday party. At the party they had a very rare dish which was oatmeal and cookies. Gerda was crowned with an orange. His mother had to sell a pearl and a ring to and the orange, that was the last time he ever got something from his mother because she was taken into the Ghettos (children of the holocaust page 16).

A Lithuania boy was fourteen years old his name was David Levine, he heard soldiers outside of the door. He had to think up a plan so he hid his two year old brother in a suitcase. David told his nephew “You may not cry, you may not speak. If you do the germans will take you and you will die.” Minutes later there was a knock on the door and there he was a Ukrainian soldier asking if there was any children in the house. The soldier did not find any child in the house so he left (Children of the holocaust page 26-27).

The Nazies created a concentration camp and killed about 3.5 million Jews. The stories are very sad. Hedi Fischer was fourteen when she was loaded into a truck which was sealed. In Hungarian the summers were very hot the temperatures were in the hundreds. The jews there would not be given any water or food. The only thing they were given was a bucket to use as a toilet. They were taken on a horrific journey and was guarded by the soldiers and their dogs. There were eighty people young and old who were very sick. There was no space for them to lay down. They were constantly pushed to go further with no food, water, lack of sleep and they all came quite delirious (Children of the holocaust page 40-41).

When they arrived they were all tired. They made them shave their heads and stripped down of all of there clothes, there new outfits were striped. The Nazies gave every one a nimber and the tattooed it on there arms. When they were being shaved some might get cut. They made them soak in iodine and some suffered if they got cut (Children of the Holocaust page 41-42) .

In December of 1941 one of six camps started to operate. Majority of the victims of the Holocaust were killed in the camps. They were poisoned to death, after they were dead they would burn there bodies over a oven to get rid of them. Babies and young children were almost automatically sent to the chambers. The teenagers had a better chance of survival because of there skills and they were stronger than most so they were helpful (Children of the Holocaust page 45).

When you stepped off of the train all you smelt was human flesh burning. You would practically be breathing human. Everyday there would be ten thousand people that died. On day there were twenty-four thousand human transport (Children of the Holocaust page 49).

Yvonne was fourteen when war broke out. She was separated from her family and never saw them again. Yvonne was stripped of her clothes and was standing there naked. They shaved her hair and put her into the gas chamber. Her and other people were in there overnight and nothing happened. The next morning the nazies assinged her to go through all of the clothes to find gold or valuables. She was forced into a death march where the Nazies pland to kill everyone who was weak and they would be shot. She eventually escaped and got married to another survivor and lived happily together (Auschwitz gas chamber, 2018).

Eva Kor, 81 was one of the jews who arrived in Auschwitz in 1944. Her and her family were together until they were split apart. Eve and her twin sister were together. All they heard was yelling, dogs barking, crying. Eva and her sister were both ten at the time. All they remember was there moms arms stretched out toward them crying for them. They never got to say goodbye and that was the last time they ever saw there mother (Auschwitz guard’s account of gas chamber scene differs from the survivors, 2015).

The worst part of the holocaust was the camps. The nazies tried to keep the camps low key, but that did not work. The first mass murder began near lublin on March 17, 1942. In 1942-1945 the Jews were deported all over Europe. In the summer and in the fall of 1942 more than 300,000 Jews were deported from the ghettos. In these camps their were more than 12,000 Jews killed every day. Some of the Jews would not all die in the camps they would die of disease, starvation (History.com).

The Nazies needed to come up with a plan to move the gas so they used a gas van. They build a permanent gas chambers for there bodies and a place to burn the bodies. The worse camp was Auschwitz. They said it was the most lethal camp. The camp was three in one it was a prison, extermination and a slave labour camp. The Jews there were deprived of food , clothing, shelter and medical care. The Jews and many others were worked to death. Auschwitz was the worst but there were others but not as bad as this one. One of the other camp was called Treblinka, it was made up of 120 people. During 17 months they killed between 750,000 to 925,000 Jews. There was on in Germany at Belzec that was made up of 104 staff members they murdered 500,000 Jews on less than ten months ( Britannica Encyclopedia.com, 2018).

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