On September 21 1941 for example, the eve of the Jewish New Year, a mobile killing squad entered Ejszyszki, a small town in what is now Lithuania. The killing squad members herded 4,000 Jews from the town and the surrounding region into three synagogues, where they were held for two days without food or water. Then in two days of killing, Jewish men, women and children were taken to cemeteries lined up in front of open pits and shot dead.
The killing squads murdered more than a million Jews and hundreds of thousands of other innocent people. So why, specifically did these killings occur towards the Jews? Looking at history between Germany and the Jews we can see conflict occurred directly after the First World War. Germany blamed the Jewish population for their defeat in the war as well as the economic slump, which followed. By the time the Nazis came into power Hitler’s obsession with the Jews became clear. Adolf Hitler worked towards creating the ideal Aryan race, he saw the Jews as a problem, getting in the way of his plans to achieve this. Hitler also believed that the Jewish population had taken over the well-paid jobs in Germany including doctors and lawyers.
Germans saw the Nazis as an escape route, a way out of their economic depression. Even before the Nazis came into power they campaigned against the Jews, however Germany didn’t believe that Hitler would carry the threats through. Two years after the Nazis came into power Hitler had believed he was in a stronger position compared to 1933. Throughout the 1930’s Hitler did try and push and alienate the Jews out of Germany, but events finally came to a head in 1938 when the Night of the Broken Glass occurred. We can then see how Hitler continued to discriminate against the Jews in a more violent fashion. September 1939 and World War 2 had begun, Hitler’s actions towards the Jews had now turned into mass genocide. As World War 2 had just broken out Hitler found it hard to transport the Jews out of Germany legally therefore concentration camps and ghettos were set up. With the invasion of Russia in 1941 and the murders of ½ a million Jews it was clear the problem was now escalating out of control. Hitler continued to build camps and ghettos throughout Europe and a process began, led by Hitler and the Nazis, to remove the Jewish population for good.
Above you can see the Nazis reasons for mass murder of the Jews. Hitler wanted a pure Aryan race as he believed Germany’s economic problems and loss of the First World War was all down to the Jews, for Germany to regain themselves the Jews had to go. However, Hitler first made his position clear when he came into power in 1933 and throughout the 1930’s only acted out small acts of terror. Once his position was secure, and this was shown on the Night of the Broken Glass, Hitler continued to persecute the Jews simply on a wider and more horrific scale.
By Marcus Wright