Holocaust

Picture yourself being discriminated, and tortured because of your religion, sexuality, mental state of mind or disability. Picture not being able to live your own life, your own way, being told what to do and when to do it, twenty-four hours a day. This is what the ones affected went through every day of this event. The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. Mass killings began in June 1941 with the shooting of Jewish civilians during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. At the end of 1941, the Germans began deporting Jews to extermination camps in occupied Poland. By May 1945, about two out of every three Jews in Europe had been murdered.

“Holocaust” is a word from Greek origin meaning “Sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were вЂ?racially superior’ and the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. The word “Holocaust” has also been widely used since the 17th century to refer to the violent deaths of a large number or people. Winston Churchill used this term before World War II, yet others use it to describe the Armenian Genocide of World War I. The usual German term for the extermination of the Jew during the Nazi period was EndlÐ"¶sung der Judenfrage (the “final solution of the Jew question”). The word “Holocaust” is also used in a wider sinse to discribe other actions of the Nazi regime.

On January 30, 193, Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany. He also declanmed himself FÐ"јhrer, after the death of the President Paul von Hindenberg in 1934. Hitler combined the offices of President and Chancellor into one usuing the power vested in him by the Enabling act, and he remained a totalitarian ruler until his suiside in 1945. The Nazi Party gained power during Germany's period of crisis after World War I, exploiting effective propaganda and Hitler's charismatic oratory to gain popularity. The Party emphasised nationalism and antisemitism as its primary political expressions, eventually resorting to murdering its opponents to ensure success. After the restructuring of the state economy and the rearmament of the German armed forces, a dictatorship was established by Hitler, who then pursued an aggressive foreign policy, with the goal of seizing Lebensraum. This resulted in the German Invasion of Poland in 1939, drawing the British and French Empires into World War II.

The first of four main groups of people killed were the disabled and mentaly ill. Akitio T4 was a program established in 1939 to maintain the genetic purity of the german population by killing or sterilizing German and Austrian citizens who were disabled or suffering from mental illness. The program was named after TiergartenstraÐ"ÑŸe 4, the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, the headquarters of the GemeinnÐ"јtzige Stiftung fÐ"јr Heil und Anstaltspflege (General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care), led by Philipp Bouhler, head of Hitler’s private chancellery (Kanzlei des FÐ"јhrer der NSDAP) and Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician. Brandt was tried in December 1946 at Nuremberg, along with 22 others, in a case known as United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al., also known as the Doctors' Trial. He was hanged at Landsberg Prison on June 2, 1948. Between 1939 and 1941 80,000 to 100,000 mentaly ill adults in institutions were killed; 5,000 children and 1,000 Jews in institutions. Outside the mental health instistions, the figures are estimated 20,000 to 400,000. Another 300,000 were forcebly setrillzed.

The second group is gay men. There is an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 gay men of German nationality have died in concentration camps. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, Chieff of SS, created the “Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.” Homosexuality was declared contrary to “wholesome popular sentiment,” and gay men were regarded as “defilers of German blood.” The Gestapo raided gay bars, tracked individuals using the address books of those they arrested, used the subscription lists of gay magazines to find others, and encouraged people to report suspected homosexual behavior and to scrutinize the behavior of their neighbors. Tens of thousands were convicted between 1933 and 1944 and sent to camps for "rehabilitation," where they were identified by yellow armbands and later pink triangles worn on the left side of the jacket and the right pant leg, which singled them out for sexual abuse. Hundreds were castrated by court order. They were humiliated, tortured, used in hormone experiments conducted by SS doctors, and killed. The allegation of homosexuality was also used as a convenient way of dealing with Catholic priests. The full extent of gay suffering was slow to emerge after the war. Many victims kept their stories to themselves because homosexuality remained criminalized in postwar Germany. Nevertheless, only small percentages (around 2%) of German homosexuals were persecuted by Nazis.

The third group was Freemasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Political activists. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that Freemasonry had “succumbed” to the Jews: “The general pacifistic paralysis of the national instinct of self-preservation begun by Freemasonry is then transmitted to the masses of society by the Jewish press.” Freemasons were sent to concentration camps as political prisoners, and forced to wear an inverted red triangle. It is estimated that between 80,000 and 200,000 were killed.

Refusing to pledge allegiance to the Nazi party or to serve in the military, roughly 12,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were forced to wear a purple triangle and placed in camps, where they were given the option of renouncing their faith and submitting to the stat’s authority. Between 2,500 and 5,000 were killed. Historian Detlef Garbe, director at the Neuengamme (Hamburg) Memorial, writes that “no other religious movement resisted the pressure to conform to National Socialism with comparable unanimity and steadfastness.”

Nacht und Nebel was a directive of Adolf Hitler on December 7, 1941 signed and implemented by Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Wilhelm Keitel, resulting in kidnapping and disappearance of many political activists throughout Nazi Germany's occupied territories.

Lastly there were the Jews, Pols and Slavs that were killed. There