Research Paper
Holocaust Overview
Jordan Byrum
Mr. Neuburger
English Comp 102-127
18 October 2012
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During one of the darkest periods the world will ever know, genocide was happening in
Eastern Europe. This genocide was designed to get rid of a race of people who were considered
filthy and no good. This mass killing became known as the Holocaust. In addition to the over
twelve million murdered, the Holocaust becomes a wound on the heart and flesh of the people
who survived, and for some these wounds will never heal. The story will never be forgotten as
long as the history books still teach and the survivor’s stories live on. How the Holocaust
occurred began with the Nazi party’s well publicized anti-Semitic beliefs.
Anti-Semitism
The term anti-Semitism originates from a man named Wilhelm Marr; he coins this term
to describe a hatred and discontent for Jewish people. The term is used and taken to extremes by
Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party. According to the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) website, Nazis spread
their ideas and views about Jewish people by “…anti-Jewish economic
boycotts, staged book burnings, and enacted discriminatory anti-Jewish
legislation.” These are shortly followed by riots which, USHMM
asserts, are started by government rumors where it is said they used the
blood of Christian children for religious rituals. This along with the
mass selling of Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, brings much of the
German population to join the Nazis in the rise of anti-Semitism.
In Hitler’s book he describes the Jews as power hungry people who want to gain world
leadership. Once the book is released and he becomes the head of the Nazi party, the anti-
Semitism movement takes off and becomes wide spread, as there were ten million copies of his
book distributed in Germany alone. With the Nazi party and anti-Semitism on the rise the
http://bit.ly/Af8XSvAdolf Hitler’s book cover for his novel, Mein Kampf.
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Holocaust begins with a night that made way for the rest of the events to happen. This night
becomes known as Kristallnacht.
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, “Night of Broken Glass”, as USHMM translates it to be called because of
the amount of windows broken and shattered these nights. The purposes of the raids are to
destroy Jewish communities, businesses, and homes. Over the course of two days at least ninety-
one people are dead, many more beaten or arrested while others lose everything they have.
Jewish synagogues, hospitals, schools and cemeteries are
all targets for vandalism as well. All this happens while
the police and fire department stand idly by watching.
A meeting is held days later about this incident, it is
decided the Germans are not to be held responsible for
these actions, which they consider necessary. But rather
the Jews are to be held responsible and they need to be ejected from the economy since it is their
fault. They also decide the insurance money for the damages is not to be given to the Jews but to
the state coffers. They try to rationalize in this meeting more attacks like this one are necessary
in order to get the Jews out of Germany for good.
This whole attack is sparked when a Polish Jewish student in Paris shoots and kills the
Third Secretary of the German Embassy. He does this because he wants to make the world know
what is going on with Jews in Europe and he is angry about his parents being deported from their
home, where they have lived since before the Nazis came into power. As soon as the news
reaches the Nazi leaders they decide the only way to make the Jews pay is by performing
http://bit.ly/H9KeZFA Synagogue burns during the night of Kristallnacht.
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dramatic acts of violence against them. After this incident the Jews start to resist the Nazis
coming and destroying anymore of their property and loved ones.
Resistance
In July of nineteen forty-two, in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Nazis declare a resettlement of
almost four-hundred thousand Jews who live here. In this plan they are supposed to deliver six-
thousand people per day to extermination camps. Two and a half months later only sixty-
thousand Jews remain in the camp. In January of nineteen forty-three it is ordered for the rest to
be removed to their final death. What the Nazis do not count on is for the remaining Jews to be
prepared for the deportation.
According to The History Place (THP), the Jews have secretly started a fighting
organization, called the ZOB and have been in contact with the anti-Nazis Poles, who smuggle
into the Ghetto enough weapons for the Jews to defend themselves against the Nazis when they
come to collect them. When the fighting begins they shoot from rooftops, attics and cellars. As a
result twenty Germans are killed and fifty are wounded.
On April nineteenth, nineteen forty-three over two-thousand Germans invade the ghetto
with the intent to capture the fighting Jews and end the resistance. However the few weapons the
Jews have, which according to THP includes “…smuggled in pistols, rifles, a few machine guns,
grenades and Molotov cocktails.” manage to hold off the Germans for a while longer. The
Germans find it difficult to track down the group of fighters as they retreat after the fighting is
over to a maze of cellars, sewers and hidden underground passageways.
Nazi leaders were infuriated by the resistance and ordered the Germans to burn down the
rest of the ghetto to get the Jews to come out. According to THP, in a file reported by one of the
Nazi leaders, General Jürgen Stroop, in t he says, “The Jews stayed in the burning building until
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because of fear of being burned alive they jumped down
from the upper stories. With their bones broken, they
still tried to crawl across the street into buildings which
had not yet been set on fire. Despite the danger of being
burned alive the Jews and bandits often preferred to
return into the flames rather than risk being caught by
us.”
Finally after twenty-eight days of resistance the Germans are ready for the fighting to end
and launch a large scale attack to blow up the synagogue. After this day fifty-six thousand sixty-
five Jews are either dead or arrested. Warsaw was said to no longer be in existence. This plan,
before the resistance, was all part of the Final Solution.
Final Solution
The Final Solution is a plan thought up and put in place by Adolf Hitler. Hitler wants all
the Jews out of his country because he thinks they are to blame for the downfall of the German
race, and that his Aryan race is superior to them. He also thinks all the Jews are banded together
to achieve world domination, also they are behind the anti-war propaganda in Germany during
World War I. In Hitler’s mind they are disloyal to Germany and would conspire against him if
there were another war, so they need to be exterminated.
The plan consisted of getting all the Jews out of Germany in numerous ways. When the
plan is implemented, in the Wannsee Conference, Hitler wants all of the Jews out of Germany so
the surrounding countries have to deal with them instead of him. He starts by taking away rights
and privileges, the Nazis implemented anti-Jewish boycotts, legislation, racism and finally
Kristallnacht. When the Jews tried to immigrate to other countries they were rejected and sent
http://bit.ly/R6EKDOGerman-Nazi soldiers burn the buildings in Warsaw in the final days of the resistance.
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back to Germany. This infuriated Hitler and he orders all the Jews to be round up by the SS,
some are shot immediately, but most were sent to ghettos to be isolated and controlled. These
ghettos are overcrowded, have not enough food and are very unsanitary.
Many people died of starvation, disease and
exhausting physical labor before the Germans could kill
them. But if they unlucky enough to live through the
starvation and disease they are eventually shipped to
killing centers and are subject to shootings, gassings, and
other acts of horror inflicted by the Nazis.
Extermination Methods
Extermination camps, concentration camps, and ghettos are established in the now
German-run-Poland, they are built by the German-Nazi workers. They are meant to keep the
Jews all together until it came their turn to be exterminated. The Jewish people are shipped to
these places on overcrowded cattle trains, and are merely told they will be moving to a new place
for new jobs and homes. Once they are off the train men and women are separated and the
selection process takes place. Those allowed to live, in concentration camps for the purpose of
working, are allowed to stay in buildings which are shared with family and strangers alike.
Food is usually rationed to one meal a day and is not enough to keep a person in proper
nutrition. Without the proper nutrition their bodies are not able to function at full capacity or
fight off disease and infection. Eventually most people died from starvation, exhaustion, or
disease. The Nazis could have gotten enough food to help feed these people but it was cheaper
not to and it seemed to help kill them off just as well.
http://bit.ly/U5jsF6This is an anti-Jewish campaign sign which reads "Help liberate Germany from Jewish capital. Don't buy in Jewish stores.", according to USHMM.
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In the death and concentration camps the initial method of murder is to shot them and
throw them into mass graves, but this proved ineffective as it took too much time and effort, with
the results being minimal. As the Jews are sent, by the train load, to the camps they are filling up
fast, another method has to be enforced to deal with them faster. Immediately upon getting off
the train the weak are picked out from the rest to be sent
to gas chambers. These gas chambers are buildings which
are made to look like showers on the inside. The Jews are
told to strip down so they can be showered before they
enter the camps. Once everyone was inside the doors were
locked and sealed and a gas, called Zyklon B, is being fed
into the showers to kill everyone instantly. The Nazis have other Jews help get all the bodies out
of the chambers, sometimes using bulldozers to get them out faster, so another set can go
through. These bodies are either put in mass graves to be covered up or burned in the crematoria.
Gassing trucks are used as a more effective method compared to mass shootings. Jews
are forced into the back of the sealed truck, which had the exhaust system fed into the back of the
truck. As the driver kept driving the fumes started to build up in the back and would eventually
suffocate the Jews. Ultimately this was deemed ineffective as well, as only a small number of
Jews could be put in the back of the trucks and the time it takes for the fumes to build up enough
to actually kill them. Some of these methods are used in some of the concentration camps but all
of them are used in the death camps.
Death Camps
Treblinka, Sobibor, Birkenau, Chelmco, and Belzec are names of some of the Nazi-run
death camps. In each of these camps thousands of people died every day, six thousand for
http://bit.ly/SPNAaHOne of the gassing vans used to kill Jews in the Chelmco death camp.
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Birkenau, using many of the extermination methods mentioned in the previous section. These
camps are spread throughout Poland, after the German take-over. These killing centers were not
only made for the purpose of killing Jews, but also to make it as impersonal for the killers as
possible.
In Treblinka there was a camp where Jews were
held for work purposes, soon those Jews would be building
their own death site. The Germans got many of the Jewish
people to build the extermination camp through forced
labor. As new Jewish people come in from the train they
are sorted and if they will hold up the flow of traffic to the
gassing chamber they are taken to the side and shot
immediately. If found healthy and able to work they are placed in the concentration camp side of
the center, but most are sent immediately to the gas chamber after being stripped of all their
possessions. After the extermination is complete the bodies are taken to a pit in the ground where
there is a fire constantly going. Meanwhile back at the station where everyone is stripped the
forced labor Jews are being forced to go through clothing and sorting it to find money,
possessions or valuable an also to destroy identity cards and stars. This is so no one can trace any
of the victims back to the camp. After the revolt here the place was torn down and a farm was
put in place so no one from town would try to unearth the remains that lay under the soil.
Auschwitz is originally started as a concentration camp, but later adds on Birkenau on the
side to act as a death camp. Zyklon B is tested for the first time on prisoners’ in an underground
block in Auschwitz, after proving its effectiveness the gassing chambers of Birkenau are built to
http://bit.ly/TAZYtI“Arbeit Macht Frei” reads “labor makes you free” in English. This was the sign the Jews saw upon arrival in Auschwitz.
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accommodate the growth of the camp. Here over fifty-one sub camps hold over one hundred and
five thousand prisoners’ at its peak in nineteen forty-four.
This camp is also one to use tattoos to number and identify prisoners. They only tattooed
those who are well enough for work labor. Some received no tattoos but identification numbers
on their uniforms. Some are unlucky enough to receive no identification number but are instead
sent straight to the gassing chambers. The Nazis used a certain selection process to who is able to
work and who is sent straight to certain death.
Selection
The selection process sorts people by gender, age, and physical attributes. Upon taking
their first steps off the train the Jews are first separated by men from women. Either gender went
to one side of the ramp or another. Usually the women and children are sent immediately to the
gas chambers, as they are deemed to be useless for work. The men are divided by age then, if
you are fourteen or older and seem to be physically able
to work then you are sent to be deloused, showered, and
shaved. If you are seen as being too old to work you are
sent with the women and children to certain death. After
you are looked over the SS either points left or right to
send you to which line is appropriate, these people
initially have no idea whether their line leads to death or
work. But to prevent panic and pandemonium everyone is told they will be showered, so they
need to strip of their clothes and belongings.
Those deemed to work are given striped pajamas, a hat and a pair of wooden clogs to
wear. They are then marched to their blocks to begin their lives in the work portion of the camps.
http://to.pbs.org/ZkIKErAfter stepping off the train men and women are separated into two different lines.
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Once they were working they become sickened by the combination of malnutrition and physical
labor. So if you aren’t selected to die through the gas chambers eventually the work would kill
you. This goes on for several years until outside forces come in to end the Nazi tyranny and set
free all of the remaining prisoners.
Liberation
During nineteen forty-four allied troops fought off the Germans and began to make their
way across Europe. They encounter thousands of camp prisoners who are left behind by Nazis
who flee from the camps in order to avoid facing the consequences of what they have done.
Several camps have been burned to the ground and the remaining prisoners are made to march
across Poland to other camps to stay hidden.
In May of nineteen forty-five liberation of the camp prisoners begins. Initially they are
sent to displaced persons camps where they live for a
while to get better since their homes are still not safe to
return to, as the anti-Semitism movement is still in action.
After spending some time in these camps, Israel opened
its doors to take in Jewish people. America also loosens
its immigration laws, thanks to Harry Truman, to allow
more of these people to come in and make their homes.
Several other countries, which are hesitant at first to allow Jews in, eventually do. Sometime
later most of the Jews have new homes and are able to go back to as normal a life as they can.
In conclusion from the year’s nineteen thirty-three to nineteen forty-four the Jewish
people as well as many other people the Nazis targeted are tormented and killed. They are placed
http://bit.ly/pmu5cvLiberated prisoners after being set free from their camps.
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in horrible conditions and given little chance to survive. The survivors on the other hand have to
go through hell and back to get back to living in somewhat normal conditions.
The mass murder and genocide, which happens in Europe, is one the most significantly
horrible things to happen in the history of the World. We can all learn a lot from this event and
can even teach others about being culturally and racially nondiscriminatory. If we can all do this
it will prevent this kind of disaster from happening again.
Works Cited
"Anitsemitism." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, 11 May 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012.
Gavin, Philip. "The Warsaw Ghetto." The History Place. Philip Gavin, 1997. Web. 04 Nov.
2012.
"Hitler's Final Solution, the Answer to the Jewish Question." The Holocaust. Oracle Education
Foundation, n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2012.
"Kristallnacht: The November 1938 Pograms." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
"Liberation, Resistance & Rescuers." Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. N.p., 06 Jan. 2012. Web.
10 Nov. 2012.
"Selection." The Holocaust Explained. The Leo Baeck London Lodge, The United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vasham, n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2012.
"Treblinka Death Camp Revolt." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012.
Vogelsang, Peter, and Brian B.M. Larsen. "Killing Methods." The Danish Center for Holocaust
and Genocide Studies. N.p., 2002. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
