The Holocaust
Independent Studies
Adriana Mrs. Berry’s Class
The Holocaust /Independent Studies /
Adriana Mrs. Berry’s Class /
11/8/2012 /
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1:
Introduction to the Holocaust pg 1
Chapter 2:
The Big Picture pgs 2-13
Chapter 3:
Conclusion pg 14
Introduction to the Holocaust
The Holocaust still affects many people today. After Germany lost World War 1, Germany was shamefully forced into limitations of the Versailles Treaty. This was one of the many causes of the Holocaust. Imagine having to hide and live in fear for the vast majority of your life. Do you wonder how the people that helped the innocent Jewish hide were punished or how there were some people that were part of the Nazi party that didn’t want to do what Hitler made them do what Hitler made them do because there were and are those kind of people in the world: if you, the reader, want to find out more about the holocaust like: “How did it start?” or “What did the victims go through?” Many people know little things and it takes the both the little and the big things to know the whole story. Once you get to know the whole thing you end up thinking: “Was that person or their ancestors’ part of the Holocaust?” The Holocaust was a very tragic and scaring event. I hope that you keep reading and that this story touches you heart as much as it touched mine.
The Big Picture:
Adolf Hitler
INTRODUCTION TO HITLER
Many people are familiar with Adolf Hitler or thefuehrer (guiding spirit) of Germany; born on April 20, 1889 in Inn, Austria, Adolf Hitler’s mission began when he began as a dispatch runner getting high enough in the ranks to become a Lance Corporal in the Armed Forces’ Sixteenth Bavarian Infantry Regiment; earning an Iron Cross during WWI. Hitler was the founder and leader of the Nazi party; Hitler also became the most important and influential person during the Holocaust.
MR.HITLER
Hitler’s talent for oratory (the art or skill of or for public speaking) and as developing the party’s symbol was a benefit in the Nazi’s favor. Hitler’s hoarse grating voice was perfect for his serious speeches. Over time, more and more Germans started believing in what Hitler said. By November 1921 Hitler had became the fuehrer with 3,000 members in the Nazi Party.
When Hitler deemed that the Weimer Republic was on the verge of collapsing, he sought to overthrow the Baravian government located in Munich, Germany with the help of General Ludendorff and local Nazis. His attempt led to complete and utter failure because he got arrested. On February 6, 1929 Hitler was sentenced to a measly five years in prison because of his “magnificent “speech.
During these five years Hitler wrote Mein Kampf or My Struggle which was supposedly the Nazi bible. “This crude, half-baked hotchpotch of primitive Social Darwinism, racial myth, anti-Semitism and lebensraum fantasy had sold over five million copies and was translated into eleven languages,” states the Jewish Virtual Library. Hitler’s failure caused him to personally vow to never face the barrels of the authorities’ gun until he was in control. He also concluded that the key to power was not force but through legal subversion of the Weimar Constitution.
MR. NAZI LEADER
In January of 1925, Hitler was able to give public speaking due to the lift of the ban on the Nazis. This was very crucial for the Nazi Party because they needed to remake the rest of their party since a substantial amount of followers left when Adolf went to jail. Hitler was able to retaliate from his self inflicted blow whenhe gained loyalty from the peasants, artisans, craftsmen, traders, small businessmen, ex-officers, students, and déclassé intellectuals, and all the other people who had a feeling their place in the economy was threatened helped the Nazis in winning over the more important people higher up on the economic pyramid. After he acquired his German citizenship he decided to run for presidency. He ended up in the run-off with von Hindenburg, whom won, in the Reichstag elections. Hitler won the last democratic election Germany.
Segregation
He soon took advantage of this newfound power to pass laws that segregated the Jewish from the rest of the German community. The Nuremburg Laws that were issued on September 15, 1935(thanks to the fact that about half of the congress were from the Nazi party) excluded the Jewish from public life, took away their citizenship, prevented Jewish doctors from working any non-Jewish Germans, and prohibited marriages between Germans and Jews. There were more prejudice laws that excluded them more than the last.
The next step that was taken against the Jewish was that the Nazi president looked the other way and maybe even encouraged the acts of burning and destroying synagogues and breaking windows of Jewish owed stores and businesses and then stealing things from these establishments, many innocent Jews were harmed during this tragic event; these two nights are now known as the Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass. Approximately 30,000 people were arrested and sent away to concentration camps.
The next cruel thing that the Nazi rulers did was put the Jewish people in ghettos. As Germany plunged all of Europe into WWI all of the Jews were sent to ghettos which were mainly cramped apartments that were shared with other families in small in apartment complexes. Most ghettos have a Judenrat or a Jewish Council to regulate life inside a ghetto. When there become too many Jews in a ghetto they either get deported to concentration, labor, or extermination camps or the whole ghetto gets liquidated. When the remaining Jews are ordered to be killed, the guards board the last few people on a train. Once when Nazis attempted to liquidate the Jews in the ghetto in Warsaw, on April of 1943, the last few Jews fought back and held the Nazis of for about 28 days.
Labor and Death Camps
Labor Camps
Concentration camps played a crucial role in the holocaust. In concentration camps people are literally worked to death. Men wore striped pants and jacket/shirt and women wore a matching dress and head scarf. About every week men came in to inspect the health of women and the ones that weren’t how they wanted were killed. The prisoners did a number of tasks that involved physical labor but some did not. Like how some cleaned sites and others worked in factories. When people were admitted to any kind of camp they had their belongings stolen and sold. The items sold ranged from personal items such as letters or photos to common items such as glasses and clothing. The captors also stole their money all of the wedding bands that belonged to the men and women.
DEATH CAMPS
There were about 5,962,129Jews killed in death camps. There were many ways that the Jewish and the Nazi P.O.W.s were executed. Many people were killed by shooting that happened outside. Another way is that the prisoners would be told that they are being taken to a shower but really, they are led to gas chambers. That way of execution was common in most death camps until gas vans were invented. Another way the Nazi’s used the “special” brick chambers was to drop pellets of poison called Zyklon B, which was safe for the soldiers to handle but cased an extremely painful death for the ones being killed.
The prisoners were often forced to carry the deceased out of the gas chambers/vans and bury them. Many survivors say that the dead were transported by prisoners in carts or wagons. After a while, the camps began to cremate the victims because it was quicker and more hygienic.
MOST NOTOURIOUS CAMPS
Some of the worst camps are the ones that people don’t know about…sometimes up to 250,000 people died in those camps. The thing is: we didn’t know. Here are some of the nastiest, most cruel camps:
Auschwitz- Birkenau (1940-45)
½ of the camp was for slaves= Auschwitz
½ of the camp was for executing unwanted prisoners= Birkenau
Krakow, Poland
Bergen-Belsen (1943-45)
Ann Frank died here in 1945
N of Hannover
Buchenwald (1937-45)
60,000 people from 18 nations died here
near Weimer
Chelmno (1941-44)
340,000people killed locally (in that nation) and from 20,000 from other countries
near Bydgoszcz
Dachau (1933-45)
the main model camp
27,800 people killed at this camp
near Munich
Majdanek (1941-44)
about 250,000 people killed here
near Lublin, Poland
Mauthausen (1939-45)
½ inmates killed were Jewish
near Linz, Austria
Ravensbruck (1939-45)
all- women camp
92,000 women/ girls were killed
Most prisoners were used for sadistic (aggressive, brutal, cruel or vicious) medical experiments.
N of Berlin
Saahsenhausen (1936-45)
About 100,000 people killed
Anne Frank
Born to Otto and Edith Frank on June 12, 1929, Annelies Marie Frank, more commonly known as Anne Frank, was one of the many children that died in the holocaust. Anne’s parents and her sister, Margot, left to Amsterdam when the Nazi’s gained more power, while Anne went to her grandparents’ house in Aachen. Then in February, she finally arrived in Amsterdam to meet the rest of her family.
All hope seemed lost when the Amsterdam fell in May of 1940. What really forced the Frank family into hiding was the fact that the Nazis began to arrest and concentrate the Jewish in all of the Netherlands at Westerberg. Things got even worse when the Auschwitz- Berkinau and Sobibor camps were opened and started. But this family would not go down without a fight.
The only alternative to going to a death or labor or concentration camps seemed to be that they had to go into hiding. They were being hidden by the people whom owned a business at 263 Prinsengracht Street in a secret attic apartment with Herman, Auguste, and Peter van Pels; along with Fritz Pfeffer. Anne called this place the Secret Annex. Imagine what it was like to wonder: “Who was going to rat you out? or Will they find me today? The searching was so consistent that their food had to be smuggled! I wonder why Otto’s co-workers risk their lives, I think personally that it was the fact that if they didn’t help them, then no one would and they couldn’t bear to know that they could have helped put the dreaded arrival off for a while and just let them go straight to the camp without a fighting chance.
On August 4, 1944, the Gestapo found the Secret Annex and they arrested the franks and sent them to Westerbork on the 8th of August. A month after being in Westerbork, they were sent on their way to Auschwitz, a famous concentration camp in the German-occupied Poland, with the other people that were hiding with them.
Anne and her sister, Margot, were separated from the rest of their family and sent to Bergen- Belsen to work for the rest of their short lives. They would remember the day they had only each other. Anne and Margot died of typhus in March of 1945, sadly, just a few weeks before the British troops liberated Bergen- Belsen. Who would think that the last time they would be free would be when they would die and when they would become cremated. That is so sad that they had to hide but then they were betrayed and then they suffered for what must have seemed like forever and their only escape was death.
One of the many treasures she left behind was her diary. The diary has helped people know what has happened during the holocaust. The diary is now
Hiding Away
The truly good people would hide the Jewish during the holocaust. They would hide them in basements, attics, or in secret spaces in their houses, shacks/garage/ barn or businesses. Unfortunately, the people that harbored the Jewish were punished severely.
Many people hid Jews in spite of the punishments and they risked everything in order to do these great acts of kindness. Sometimes the real tests to a good person come when no one is looking and these are defiantly true acts of compassion and kindness which really gave the Jewish hope when it was needed or when there was none.
One of the many and most common punishments was death. If the Nazis came across someone that was harboring Jews, They would either a) send them to a death camp of take them to Hitler and execute them in front of Hitler. Both the Jews and the hiders were living in fear for their lives in case they were discovered.
Another very common punishment was to draft the men that were hiding the jews into the German Army. They did this so that they could defend their country for Hitler and so that they could supposedly “learn some honor and pride for their countries victories and respect for Hitler and his words”. They were informed of this by letter that was always signed in a nice manor like: “we wish you the best” or “good luck defending our country, we trust you” though the Nazi party thought something entirely different.
Jail-time is another very serious penalty for hiding Jews in your basement. People were often kept in jail for life or the more recent ones emitted or survivors were freed when the War was over. Sometimes life in the jail for the hidings was worse or just as bad as being in a concentration camp.
Bombings
The people that dealt with bombings were called the Bomb Squad. There are many reasons for being on a bomb squad. One reason is for just wanting to help the German army and being a true Nazi and you are just too out of shape of too old. Another common reason is that you hid Jews or did something rebellious to the Nazi government and you were to old and out of shape or you had a medical condition or you just got lucky and were sent to be on the squad instead of the Army.
People on a Bomb Squad would ride in a bus traveling from bombed town after town looking for survivors and clearing out the dead. Every now and then they would get lucky and find a survivor or two and they might even find one that is alert and conscious; in shock but still conscious.
Aftermath
Many, many, many people died in the holocaust. Most were innocent in some eyes and in others they were the nastiest people in the world. Most of the voices of the nasty ones were silenced forever and that was as much as a victory that the Nazis needed, but with America’s help they saw what has happened and that the Jewish were just peopleand they had lives.
The damage was tremendous and some families are still recovering today. Many people still dedicate things to survivors of the holocaust. Sometimes we take what we have for granted and don’t know how good we have it. One of the good outcomes of the end of the holocaust is that the many, many Jews that were imprisoned and captured were freed, and they would take pleasure in free life and their choices. Hitler disappeared soon after the Nazis lost the war. He was found dead in a secret bunker by the allies’ search to kill the killer.
Conclusion
I hope that you found some if not all of the answers to your questions. Many people died because of Adolf Hitler’s hatred of the Jewish. The holocaust was a ripple of events that affected the lives of so many people. This all started with WWI when Germany was forced into the Versailles Treaty. Then there were laws passed,and then there were ghettos and concentration camps and then full out war. The diary of Anne Frank is a heartbreaking story of a girl that died in the Holocaust. I would recommend you read the book called The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak; it is the book that got me interested in the Holocaust. It is a story of a young girl whose foster parents decide to take in a Jewish boy named Max Vandenberg. This heart touching story will captivate you and inspire you to look into the Holocaust more. Anyway, the Holocaust was a very tramatic event.
Bibliography
- Page, Melvin E. "Adolf Hitler: Biography." Adolf Hitler: Biography. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2012. <
- Rosenberg, Jennifer Rosenberg. "HolocaustÂFacts." About.com 20th Century History. About.com, n.d. Web. 04 May 2012. <
- Standard Educational Corp. "Concentration Camps." New Standard Encyclopedia. 1984 ed.