The first system of the liquidation of the Jewish race was mobile death squads. These killed at least one million people by Germans travelling up and down Europe shooting Jews and digging graves. Everybody that was German took part in the extermination. The Jews were normally made to undress before they were shot. Gold was removed from their teeth and their hair was cut off. However in the second year of this Hitler became worried about the psychological affect of this on his troops and so he moved on to gas vans.
Gas vans were the second system of liquidation. This worked by poisoning the Jews with fumes from the air pipes of vans. This was neater than the shooting but took too long. Consequently Hitler decided to call a meeting for all of the representatives of the different places Germany had conquered to come and discuss what to do next. They decided on the “Final Solution”.
In January 1939 every important German met in secret in Berlin and decided on all of the details of how they were going to kill any Jew living in Europe. This action would make sure Hitler got his dream of having a race of “blonde supermen”. They decided to build ghettos. These camps had big iron gates that were guarded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Jew’s starved and were only fed two slices of stale bread a day, if they were lucky. The terrible conditions meant that they could catch deadly diseases like typhus and dysentery very easily. However the Ghetto’s weren’t built for killing, this was just the rounding up of the Jew’s until they went on to Death or Concentration camps.
The Jew’s were packed tightly into cattle trucks and taken to one of the six camps called Chelmo, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzel, Majdanek and the most notorious Auschwitz. In the cattle trucks there was no water, food or space. When they arrived at the gates of one of these camps, doctors like Joseph Mengele decided weather they were fit enough to work. All women were sent straight to death camps. Any healthy male was sent to the concentration camps, where they were forced to work everyday and night for the Germans, building death camps and burying Jew’s, maybe even Jews they knew.
Any Jew that was sent straight to one of the death camps was immediately gassed. Here the Jew’s had all their hair cut off. They would then go to “take a shower, to be bathed and deloused”. Two thousand Jews at a time went into these shower rooms, however when they were locked in it wasn’t water that came through the spout, Zyklone B a deadly gas was used. Everybody in the room was dead within fifteen minutes. The death camps killed over two million Jews. When the Jew’s were dead and gold was removed from their teeth they were sent up in lifts to ovens, where eight bodies at a time where incinerated.
When the news of Hitler’s actions came out only a few thousand very sick and traumatised Jews were found, others were sent on long tiring “death marches” towards the west. 800,000 pairs of shoes were found at Madjanek alone and seven tons of women’s hair. Hitler admitted to the death of over a quarter of a million Jews but denied doing anything wrong and said those years will always be thought of as the finest in Germany’s history.
Some people believe that Hitler didn’t start out with a dream of the extermination of the Jewish race and that it just happened. I believe that to kill over a quarter of a million people you can’t just accidentally do it, and that all evidence points to it being a well organised, long term act of racism.
Outline the Religious Roots of Anti-Semitism
In this second question I will be considering how anti-Semitic rumours started up and where they come from. I will split each era into a section, the first of which is the gospels and the Early Church. In this paragraph I will be looking at the bible and thinking about how the Jews are portrayed as “agent’s of the devil”. The second paragraph will be on the medieval and the middle age era, I will be mainly taking into account the atmosphere and rumours that came about considering how important the church was in modern day life. The next will be on Martin Luther and how he affected the way the Jews were thought of. The fourth and final paragraph will be on the modern church and how they helped to stop anti-Semitism! Finally I will sum up this essay with a conclusion asking the question “Are religion and the bible really to blame?”
The Jews were thought of as the murderers of Jesus, and they where blamed for his death, “but they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”.. Luke 23:21, explains why. Jesus also told the Jews that they were the son of the devil, “You belong to your father, the devil…he was a murderer from the beginning” John 8:44 says this. It also tells us that if the Jew’s are the sons of the devil, and the devil was a murderer, it means that the Jew’s are murderers too. The bible also says that Christian Churches were the subject of criticism from the Jews from 1 Thessalonians 2:14 “You suffered from your own country men the same things those churches suffered from the Jews”. At this time everybody believed everything written in the bible therefor rumours about Jews being “Christ killers” and “Agent’s of the devil” were spread very easily. Anti-Semitism also came from Christians being jealous of the Jews, as they were known for being very successful.
In the Middle Ages these rumours were still very strong, and Churches were still very upset that Jews wouldn’t convert. The church was a very important part of everyday lives. People also weren’t educated enough to stop and question the thoughts that Jews killed Jesus and drank the blood of little children. Europe had a very Christian atmosphere and if you weren’t Christian you were thought of as evil.
Martin Luther was a very successful and respected church leader. Luther tried to persuade Jews to convert from Judaism to Christianity, as Jews where seen as a threat to modern Christian Germany. When they still declined he punished them by ordering his followers to burn down Synagogues and to publicly humiliate the Jews. As Luther was so well respected so was what he said and this started up anti-Semtism feelings that the Nazis were later to use.
As the Modern Church was so influential and Christianity was very strong; if the leaders and priests started to defend the Jews, or at least persuade Christian followers that the rumours were rumours, the Holocaust may have been stopped. However as Christian churches were upset that Jews wouldn’t convert, and as they believed that the Jews weren’t their responsibility the modern church did nothing to stand up for the Jews and stop anti-Semitism.
I believe that the holocaust isn’t all to blame on quotes from the bible but was due to a lack of decent education. Because the education system was particularly poor nobody stopped to question what was in the bible which enforced anti-Semitic hatred. I also think that jealousy played a big part in the years before the Holocaust, as Jews were extremely successful.
Is It Now Possible To Believe In A Caring God
That Looks After the Jews;
Due To the Holocaust
In this section of this essay I will be answering the question, “Is it possible to believe in a caring God who looks after the Jews; due to the Holocaust?” This essay, although it will contain actual quotes, will not be completely factual as I will be stating my own biased opinion.
Before the Holocaust Jewish beliefs were that: “God is extremely powerful, he is watching you all the time” and “God chose the Jews look after them”. Now, because of the Shoa, although some Jews still belief this to be true, Jews have had to rethink there beliefs asking the question “Does God really exist? And if so why did he let the Holocaust happen?”
Ignaz Maybuam is one Jew who still believes very strongly in the three beliefs stated above. He has said that God was doing his religion a favour by updating it. That God was reminding the Jews of his presence. I agree with this quote as I think God did start off with an idea of letting the Jews know he was still there, but because of free will his plan backfired ending in tragic death of six million Jews. Bernard Maza also agrees with this idea as he says, “Jews were being punished for concentrating too much on money and politics rather than God and religion”. This means that God was trying to persuade the Jews that religion is more powerful than gold and respect.
However there are some Jews who believe that God did abandon them and that he broke his binding promise, the covenant with the Jews. I disagree with this idea, as I believe that God was with the Jews throughout the pain and suffering that was the Holocaust. I think God wanted to remind the Jews he was there, but because of his gift of free will his idea backfired resulting in the tragic death of six million Jews.
Another viewpoint is that of Fackehiem. He does not believe that God was either trying to remind his Jews of the covenant or that He abandon this promise. He says, “God’s presence is a mystery that can not be explained. It is not in our power to understand the prosperity of the wicked nor the afflictions of the righteous.” When saying this Fackehiem meant that he thinks no human mind can possibly begin to answer the question posed in the title of this section, that the answer is and will remain a great unsolved mystery of life. I also disagree with Fackehiem, as I believe that if we look closely into Jewish history, and the events leading up to the Shoa we will be able to answer the question.
Therefor I believe that God started off with an idea to remind the Jews of their promise that he will always be there for them, however because of his gift of free will, he could not stop the tragedy that occurred during the Holocaust.
