Why is it important to remember the Holocaust?

by aoifebourdet (student)

What was the Holocaust and why did the Nazis persecute the Jews?

The Nazis were a political party in Germany at the time of the Second World War, and they were ruled by a man named Adolf Hitler. Hitler believed that the Great World War was the result of Jews and that they lost the war because of the Jews. Hitler wanted to get rid of anyone who was Jew; this resulted in an event called the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a very unique event. It evolved around 1933 and 1945. The Holocaust was a time of discrimination against Jews. They were taken away from their communities and humiliated in front of everyone, then they were sent to camps were they were made to work hard, have hardly any food and they were being treated as if they were not human beings. At the end of the Second World War, six million Jews had been killed and one and half million were children.

But not just the Jews were involved in the Holocaust. Those with mental or physical disabilities were sent to a “hospital” were they were told they would be getting cared for but instead they were murdered with lethal injections, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, trade unionists, political opponents, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war were sent to the concentration camps. Hitler wanted a country with a race of Aryan. They had blonde hair and blue eyes; Hitler wanted to get rid of anyone that stood in the way of this happening. Hitler used propaganda to convince the people of Germany that it was the Jews that were the result of all their problems. His propaganda included: Posters of Hitler, how to help with the war, about Jews and many other things that helped him gain trust in the people of Germany. The Jews had big businesses and shops and Hitler believed that this was they were the reason that Germany was having financial problems. Hitler’s speeches were the most powerful thing he had because the way he talked to the people he convinced them with anything he said.

Children at a concentration camp.

Propaganda poster of Hitler.

The Nazis persecuted the Jews because they believed that the Jews were the result of why they lost World War 1 and that they had started World War 2 because they wanted to get rid of Germany and dominate the world. Hitler used the Jews as an excuse for Germany’s declining economy, there was a lot of Jews and Hitler didn’t like them, so if he convinced the people of Germany that they were the reason for Germany’s problems so then he would be able to get them out of the country. The original plan for the Jews was that they were to be sent to islands off the Caribbean but instead camps were made and any Jew, men, women, children were sent to these camps which was a living nightmare for them. The Great Depression came after the First World War and Germany had to pay a lot of money back for damages, many people were left poor because tax had gone up and Hitler once again had blamed this all on the Jews because they made Germany lose the war and then it resulted in the Great Depression. Jews were brought out onto the street, beaten with weapons or sometimes shot and people would stand by and cheer because Hitler had convinced them that they were “vermin”.

Kristallnacht also known as “The Night of Broken Glass” was on 9-10th of November 1938. The Night of Broken Glass was a series of attacks against Jews throughout Germany and Austria. Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and villages, as and civilians destroyed buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the

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streets covered in pieces of smashed windows which is where the name "Night of Broken Glass” comes from. Ninety-one Jews were killed and 30,000 Jewish men were taken to , where they were tortured for months, with over 1,000 of them dying. Around 1,668 were ransacked, and 267 set on fire. In Vienna alone 95 synagogues or houses of prayer were destroyed. The Nazis did this to the Jews because they thought that Jews were taking over the country, they had too many businesses and the Jews didn’t believe what the Germans did, or what Hitler did.

The Nazis persecuted the Jews for many reasons but one of the main reasons that so many Jews were killed was the fact that they were not the “superior” race. They were different. They believed in different things and for that reason they were killed. Hitler wanted to get rid of the Jews because they were not what he wanted his people to be like.

The Aryan race was the “superior” race that Hitler wanted. They had blonde hair and blue eyes and Hitler wanted a country with a pure, perfect race. He didn’t want anyone who had an abnormality, mental illness, black, Asian etc. Women were given money for every child they had which was a pure German, this encouraged women to have children which helped Hitler and his country. Jewish women who were pregnant were either killed, their child killed at birth or they were made to give birth in such conditions that the child would not survive. This decreased the number of Jewish people and their religion was slowly decreasing throughout the war.

Jews didn’t fit into his superior race so therefore they had to be taken care of. Many plans were made for the Jews but it came down to “The Final Solution” which was to exterminate all Jews. Concentration camps were set up all over the country and millions of Jews were sent to them just because they were not part of the Aryan race.

When the Jews were sent to concentration camps, twins were the most sought out people. Most of the twins were children and they were taken away from their mother and they went to be experimented on. They were living in luxury compared to the other people in the camp but then they experiments would start. Children were given limb and organ transplants, injections to their eyes to try and change the colour and anything else that would increase the chances of having two “pure” children. Children as young as four were sent to get experimented on and not that many survived.

Dr. Josef Mengele was the man who carried out most of the experiments on the twins. Mengele tried to produce a pure German by experimenting but instead he tortured young children until they died.

“Twin girls, Jewish of course, about the age of four, were taken from their mother then sent to Mengele. He looked after them properly but I hadn’t seen them in a while. Then I saw them. He had sewn them back to back like Siamese twins because he wanted to see if it would work by connecting their nerves but they were in so much agony. I remember their faces. They died about three days after because of the pain and infections they had got in the wounds.” This was told by a Jewish man who was forced to work with Mengele.

I think this was the main reason that The Nazis persecuted the Jews.

Why is it important for us to remember the Holocaust?

It is important for us to remember the Holocaust because we have to know that something like that would never happen again in this lifetime. We have to learn from the past so we won’t make the same mistakes. It shows how much power one man had and how he was able to do whatever he liked and he did. We have to remember the dead, how they died because it shows that we have respect towards them and that we are not just going to forget one of the biggest genocides ever.

1.5 million children were killed in the Holocaust, we will never know what music could have been composed, what poems could have been written, what theories would change the world. Instead these children were murdered because of what they believed in and we have to remember this event because it has shaped what are world is today. The way we live, the way to go to work and school might not have been the same. The Holocaust was such an important event not just because of the number of people killed but because of the power that one man had and that he could anything. He changed what children did at school, he changed Germany’s view on people who were not the “superior race” and he changed the lives of millions of Jews.

We have all been educated about how to stand up to bullying, yet few do. The reason for this is simple: most of us are too concerned with our own image to stand up for victims who may be different, unpopular, or misunderstood. We convince ourselves that this is a part of life; there is nothing we can do about it. We watch, not approving of it, yet doing nothing to stop it. We have the tendency to quietly stand by and allow things we disapprove of to happen.

As Martin Niemoller says in his poem: "First they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist, then they came for the Trade Unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist, then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."

Martin Niemoller.

About sixty years ago, most people were aware of what was happening to the Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and mentally disabled, yet they chose to stand by; they were too worried about getting tortured themselves, so they chose to ignore the cries of those in need. They were, like the students in the hallway, bystanders to a horrific crime. Many acts of violence and discrimination happening today are due largely to the fact that people fail to acknowledge both the history of the Holocaust and the acts of injustice occurring around us today.

The Holocaust was a horrifying event in history. The countless amounts people who were robbed of their identities, torn away from their family and tortured by Hitler's soldiers had their lives tragically altered due to his arrogance. For many, the Holocaust is difficult to hear about. It makes them uncomfortable to hear about the gassings, the forced deportments, and the killing of so many people. If we are to prevent similar events from happening in the future, we need educate ourselves about this horrific occurrence. We need to teach ourselves about the stories of Tova Friedman, a child survivor. It is important that we learn about how she and so many others suffered; how they were torn from their families, betrayed by neighbours, and made to live in small, camps unfit for human life. Ignoring the facts and disregarding the stories will only lead to similar disasters. That is why it is important for us to remember the Holocaust.

Bibliography.

The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy by Martin Gilbert

by John Boyne

By Aoife Bourdet