Holocaust Case

The Holocaust

The Holocaust was a rough time after World War II that killed millions of Jews, actually almost wiping out the whole Jewish population of Europe, under Adolf Hitler's rule. Even though there was so many killed there was some who were able to escape the German Army.

Adolf Hitler, who dedicated himself to discovering a way out of the anxiety for Germany, lived from 1889 til his death in 1945. He was born in the Austrian town of Braunau. Hitler was very smart and did well in primary school and was very popular among his peers. While very young people could see that Hitler had leadership skills and was in deep connection with his religious side. Another side of him came out when he reached secondary school and he was not the top student. When he saw that he was not on top, he decided to quit trying. That is when he started losing his popularity among his peers and began hanging out with younger people because he could still have leadership over them. Hitler got an inheritance at age fifteen when his father passed and he planned to move to Vienna to become a student. When he was denied by two schools he was so humiliated that he could not bring himself to tell his mother, so he pretended to be a student and live in Vienna. His mother passed away in 1907 and hurt Hitler more than it did when his father passed. Hitler's choice to dedicate himself to Germany came from the changes that were happening all around him after the Great War and the Great Depression. The choices Hitler made that were supposed to solve some anxiety in Germany actually brought on more than less.

At the end of World War II, Nazi's started executing Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, and any targeted. The main focus was to get rid of Jew, which was commanded by Adolf Hitler. Tens of thousands of Jews were able to escape from Germany and Austria, but most of them were unable to do so because most of the European nations limited the migration of Jewish refugees. Towards the beginning of war Nazi's thought of the idea of mass deportation of Jews, which proved that the idea was impractical and had more problems. The Jews found ways even during this time to still practice their religion. (Katz, Introduction).

In 1941, the opportunity arose to invade the Soviet Union and provided Hitler an opportunity to solve what he thought of was the problem of Jews throughout Europe. Nazis sent three thousand troops in mobile detachments known as SS Einsatzgruppen, which meant "action squads" to kill the entire populations of Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs in newly occupied territories. At the end of 1941 they had already killed 1.4 million Jews.

The Wannsee Conference, held on January 20, 1942, had fifteen top Nazi bureaucrats that agreed to evacuate all Jews from Europe to camps in eastern Poland. The Jews were packed into railway cars during mass deportations without knowing where they were headed, which was into these camps. In the camps the Jews were worked to death or executed. Some camps that are well known is Belzec, Treblinka, and Auschwitz where the Nazi camp personal took their victims from all over Europe to do industrial work, to starve, be used as medical experiments, and just be executed. The largest camp was Auschwitz, had at least one million Jews were killed by using crystallized prussic acid Zyklon B as the gassing agent in the gas chambers used to kill them. Auschwitz and other camps had crematories to get rid of the bodies, or evidence of the Germans crimes.

Auschwitz, was the largest concentration camp, where 1.1 million Jews were killed. The camp was commanded to be constructed on April 27, 1942 by Heinrich Himmler. By the time the camp was liberated it had grown to three camps and fourty-five sub camps. At this camp they held prisoners, conducted medical experiments, and had gas chambers. The camp was also known as Block 11 (a place of severe torture) and the Black Wall (a place of execution). (Rosenberg, par. 3). At the front of the camp was a sign that said, "Arbeit Macht Frei", which means "Work makes one free". (Rosenberg, par. 3). Among the people that were held at Auschwitz were those of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, criminals, and prisoners of war that were brought there by stuffed cattle cars on trains. Families were brutally split up in two lines. They would send women, children, and men who appeared weak to the line on the left. The young men and strong looking workers were sent to

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