The attempt to annihilate the Jews was known as the Holocaust. There were many different methods to kill the Jews. They would get sent to Ghettos, where they were deliberately starved and shot. Others were sent to the ‘death’ camps such as Auschwitz in Poland.
After the First World War the Jews were blamed for the defeat of Germany. They were also turned on because they were more successful in business and wealthier. The Gestapo was sent out to kill Jews in their own homes, beat up on the streets or shot in other public places. Hitler thought that they were all ‘a source of evil’ and ‘tragedy’. He would not let marriages between Jews and Germans take place. Sexual relationships between the Germans and Jews were forbidden. Jews were not permitted to employ female Germans less than 45 years as domestic help. No Jews could ever be a German citizen. These are just a few of the laws that Hitler passed to get rid of the Jews.
Thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps i.e. Dachau. Signs were placed outside cafes, roadsides and shops reading ‘Jews not wanted’. At the end of 1933 35,000 Jews had fled for Germany. Many Jews fled to all kinds of placed around the world. Hitler encouraged this. He wanted as many Jews out as he possibly could. He even had a plan to set up a Jewish state in Madagascar. Not many other countries wanted the Jews though. On 9 November 1938 the Nazis carried out the night of broken glass. They broke all the glass of Jewish home, shops and synagogues. In many placed normal German citizens helped the Nazis.
Adolf Eichmann, a leading Nazi, was given the job of ‘Jewish resettlement’. He decided to move Jews into Ghettos. The most well known was in Warsaw. Huge walls were built to separate them from the outside world. In every room 7 people would be living, eating, and sleeping in there. They were given 1.8 kg of bread per person per month. This amounts to 2 and a half loaves. Nearly all of the flats were unheated. Lots of Jews caught typhus (a disease carried by lice). The people who tried to escape form the ghetto were executed. Half a million Jews died in the ghetto. Many children died of hunger and died on the streets because of the ghettos. The Jews were turning almost into sub-human beings to the outside world.
The Einsatzgruppe was a force, whose job was to murder all the Jews it could find. Altogether the Einsatzgruppe killed over two million people. It seemed that they had no feelings at all. They treated the Jews as though they were ‘cargo’.
The ‘Final Solution’ was then announced. Thousands of Jews were sent to death camps i.e. Auschwitz. At the death camps people were sent to gas chambers. They didn’t know they were going to be gassed with monoxide they had the impression they were going to have a shower. It took from 3-15 minutes for the people to die. They were then taken to be burnt and put on a ‘death’ pile. The others which were able to work avoided death but if they slacked they were shot or beaten till death. The men were separated form the women to go to the gas chambers. At Treblinka camp an eyewitness camp of a baby being smashed against the wall until a bloody mess remained in his hands was one example of the things which went on. The mother then had to take her baby to the ‘bath’.
Many people find it hard to understand how anybody could let this happen. There are different points but I think it’s because they were hiding form themselves what they were really doing. They didn’t think of the Jews as humans they thought of them more as cargo.
