Accounts Of The Holocaust
Accounts Of The HolocaustAccounts of the Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. I will tell the story of the Holocaust through many different personal accounts of people involved in many different sides of this incredible story. I will do this by using the personal accounts of surviving victims, of those not directly involved in the event, though affected by it, and the defense of the Nazi party. But first, I will tell you a little about the event.
The Holocaust began in 1938 and lasted until 1945. This was most definitely the hardest seven years the Jewish population has ever faced. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 European countries occupied by Germany during the war. The rise of the Nazi party�s anti-Semitism became noticeable in 1935 when laws were put forth limiting the rights of all German Jews.
For the Jewish population the hardest time came with the introduction of the concentration camps. Jewish people were
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stripped from their homes and hiding places by the German special police services such as the Special State Police (the Gestapo), the Storm Troopers (S.A.), and the Security Police (S.S.). The Jews were transported, in mass amounts, to different Concentration and Extermination Camps throughout Europe. Here they were forced into labor and exterminated when found to be useless to the Nazis.
To explain the cause of the Holocaust we must first look at the situation through the eyes of the Nazi party. They truly believed that the Jewish population was the enemy and that annihilation was the only way to rebuild Germany. Dr. Joseph Gobells, the author of The Gobells Diaries, and a member of the Nazi party explained:
The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them. Their destruction will go hand in hand with the destruction of our enemies. We must hasten this process with cold ruthlessness. We shall thereby render an inestimable service to a humanity tormented for thousands of years by the Jews. This uncompromising anti-Semitic attitude must prevail among our own people despite all objectors. (www.virtual.co.il,1)
Nazis felt that in order to build a perfect world all the impure
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people, such as the Jews, must be exterminated.
The Nazi party also expressed why all Jews, including women and children, were targeted. Heinrich Himmler, of the Nazi party explains:
We were asked: What about the women and children? I made up my mind to find a clear solution here too. You see, I did not feel I had a right to exterminate the men while allowing the children to grow up and take revenge upon our sons and grandsons. We had to reach the difficult decision of making this nation vanish from the face of the earth. (www.virtual.co.il,2)
This statement shows that the plan of the Nazi party went much farther than the time of the war, They wanted to build...
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