In 1938 a Jew shot a Nazi official dead and Hitler was absolutely furious. He ordered his Army, the S.A, to commence a week of terror against the Jews. It began on 10th November 1938 with 'The night of the Broken Glass.' 10,000 Jewish shopkeepers had their windows smashed and contents looted while Jewish homes and Synagogues went up in flames. The S.A men murdered dozens and arrested thousands on the grounds of being a Jew. The situation would deteriorate soon after when the Jews were ordered to pay the Nazi government 1 billion Marks. The S.A men also continued their campaign of hate against the Jews through humiliation as they forced innocent Jewish men, women and children to get down on their hands and knees and scrub the streets. Even worse and even more worrying was the fact that Heinrich Himmler ordered a massive expansion of all concentration camps in Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Lichtenburg.
In September 1939 the German army defeated the Poles in just 2 weeks and as a result, all Jews living in German occupied Europe were forced to register and relocate in major cities. More than 10,000 Jews of all denominations arrived in Krakow daily. The Jews, after registering, were taken directly to a ghetto where they were forced to re-house in extremely overcrowded conditions. The men were separated from the women and children and communication between them was forbidden. Meanwhile, Nazi murder squads followed thousands of Jews who tried to flee to Russia and butchered them in the same fields as they buried them in. The Nazi officers totally ruled the ghetto where the S.A men used extreme brutality against any Jews who stepped out of line and murder was not uncommon in the ghetto.
A conference was held in Wannsee in January 1942 amongst the Nazis, to determine what to do with the Jews and find a 'final solution.' The result was to attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population. Murder and savagery increased after the liquidation of the ghetto in March 1943 when children and other non-essential workers were taken away to extermination camps while others were taken to force labour camps to work for the Nazis, building new gas chambers etc. Most of the Jews from the Labour camps were also murdered sooner or later. Overall, from 1941 - 1945 six million Jews were murdered and their bodies incinerated
Those Jews who were 'lucky enough' to be classified as being essential workers were not exterminated, but instead were sent to force labour camps. The others, who were seen as being non-essential workers, were sent directly to the gas chamber for extermination. The process by which the Jews were classified was quite ludicrous. A German doctor sat perched on a chair while the Jews lined up in single file, one behind each other. The doctor took one very brief look at the Jew and from that, decided if he/she was an essential or non-essential worker. The Nazis did not like very educated Jews and put most teachers and talented musicians straight into the gas chamber as soon as they heard their professions. Unfortunately, most of the Jews who were said to be non-essential workers were women and children, resulting in their extermination. The Nazis herded the hundreds of thousands of non-essential workers on to massive freight trains and cattle wagons. These trains and wagons had previously been used to carry livestock or cargo across the country and there must have been a terrible stench in the compartments. The trains were also segregated sometimes between 30 and 40 Jews could be packed into one small compartment. The Jews found it very difficult to breathe in the compartments as the vast numbers quickly used up all of the available oxygen. These trains drove directly into the Concentration Camps where the majority of the Jews would go on to face their fate. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered even before they reached the concentration camps. due to S.A brutality. Gas chambers had previously only been able to hold around 200 Jews but the Nazi's forced the Jewish captives to erect new larger, more efficient chambers in 1938 and soon most chambers could hold up to 2,000 Jews at once. The Jews were told to strip naked in order to part-take in a mass shower. Sometimes they were handed soap and towels to avoid any arousing suspicion. As soon as the Jews were all in the chamber, the large door was slammed shut behind them and, through an opening in the roof; a piece of crystallised prussic acid was dropped in. The acid poisoned everyone and within 15 minutes the entire chamber was dead. Jewish prisoners dragged out the corpses, which were then incinerated. This brutal way of disposing of the Jews was the main way the nazis tried to fulfil their idea of a final solution, In which all Jews of Europe were going to be disposed of. Anti-Semitism had always been present in European life and Hitler was an example of an obsessive anti-Semite. He fed on the Anti-Semitism feelings felt by German people and was able to translate his intense feelings of hatred into a series of policies and laws. These laws progressively eroded the rights of German Jews from 1933-1939. Once firmly in power, Hitler's plans for ending the struggle between the Aryan race and the 'inferior races' was set to work. This meant the persecution of Jews. This persecution took a number of forms. In order to conduct it successfully the Nazis needed to create the right conditions for the German people to accept the policy.
World war two was the opportunity for Hitler to make use of his ideas. Over 6 million Jews were killed between 1939 and 1945 when the Germans lost the war Hitler committed suicide so that he would not be hanged for war crimes. Hitler was one of the most evil men in history.
