The Holocaust Essay

Submitted By PinkNinjaPanda
Words: 1257
Pages: 6

Overview
It all began in January 1933 when a German political party called the Nazi party took power. The Nazi party was led by a dictator named Adolf Hitler. Through propaganda Hitler persuaded people of German to do what he believed was best for their country. One of Hitler’s ideals was that he want to create the ‘perfect’ Aryan race, these were people with blonde hair and blue eyes, completely perfect Europeans.
This perfect race did not include people of the Jewish religion, Catholics from Poland, the Disabled, Homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Polish civilians, Gypsies and any other communities that did not match the Nazi ideals. However the Jewish took the most persecution and deaths at the hands of the German Nazi’s.
The Holocaust refers to extermination of an estimated 6 million Jews during World War II. That was approximately 2/3 of all European Jews alive at that time. From the start of the war in 1939 the Nazi’s moved many hundreds of thousands of Jews into ghettoes. These ghettoes were very small and extremely overcrowded. If anyone tried to escape they would have been executed. Many others died from starvation, disease, poor living conditions and there were hardly any toilets with no sewers and no heating during the freezing winters.
The Nazis set up huge prisons called concentration camps, this is where prisoners were starved, tortured and worked to death. In 1942 the Nazis set up six extermination camps in Poland which contained specially built poison gas chambers designed to kill many people quickly and easily. Around 2.7 million Jews were murdered during 1942 alone. This was the most intense period of killing in the Holocaust.
In the final months of the war allied soldiers moved across Nazi Germany freeing the concentration camp prisoners. The deaths committed during the Holocaust destroyed most European Jewish communities and after the war an estimated 700,000 Jews left Europe and immigrated to other parts of the world, mainly Israel and some to the United States. After the war most death and concentration camps where destroyed by the allied forces but some still remain open as public museums. They still show the piles of clothes and shoes from the Jewish people.

Analysis
The Holocaust was a significant time in history for many reasons. The first reason is that many innocent people died at the hand of Hitler and the Nazi’s. The summary above shows evidence that around 6 million Jews were murdered and a further 5 million people from many creeds and cultures where killed. The sources that I read also explain that most of these killings happened between 1941 and 1945.
Source A shows a Jewish woman’s ghetto. You can see a large number of women in quite a small area. There is a barbed wire fence stopping any women from escaping and in the corner of the image is a soldier probably a police officer or a Nazi soldier guarding the camp perimeter.
Source B shows piles of clothes outside a death camp. This would have been from when they had to change clothes before they entered. They were told they were having a shower but really it was the gas chambers. In the background it shows the gas chambers in houses which makes them think nothing is wrong and makes them to not feel panicked.
The overview above has some connections and with what is explained. The first piece of evidence and source A has some connection because of Hitler’s orders and what he wanted many indicant people lost their lives and went through torcher.
The last piece of evidence is that above is stated that Hitler didn’t want any of Jewish religion, Catholics from Poland, the Disabled, Homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses etc. in his perfect race this is one quote he used “This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.” Most of his quotes were from his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

Why should it be taught in schools?
I think it’s important for everyone to have a basic