Holocaust

"Was there any excrement, any shamelessness in any form, above all in cultural life, in which at least one Jew would not have been involved? As soon as one even carefully cut into such an abscess, one found, like maggots in a decaying body, often blinded by the sudden light, a kike." 1 Adolf Hitler

It is important to study the past because information is the opposite of mis-information. Those that want us to hate Ð'- us, average every-day people Ð'- convince us through ignorance.

Hatred was the beginning of the mass destruction of millions of people. Adolf Hitler's hatred of the Jewish people is well-documented. When Adolf Hitler became Germany's head of state, he introduced anti-Semitic laws which discriminated against Jewish people living in the areas he controlled. He saw Jews as a problem that needed to be removed.

Millions of people were murdered in horrific ways. It is estimated that 5.1 million Jews died during the Holocaust. This figure includes over 800,000 who died from "Ghettoization and general privation;" 1,400,000 who were killed in "Open-air shootings"; and "up to 2,900,000" who perished in camps. Hilberg estimates the death toll in Poland at "up to 3,000,000".2

How could the hatred of one man lead to the unhindered destruction of so many people in a democratic country? First, Hitler, a capable orator and a person who understood the value of propaganda, was able to gain the support of large business and the working class population. Propaganda was central to the persecution and genocide. "The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it," stated Herman Goebbels, Minister of Enlightenment3.

As Minister of Enlightenment, Goebbels had two main tasks: to ensure nobody in Germany could read or see anything that was hostile or damaging to the Nazi Party and to ensure that the views of the Nazis were put across in the most persuasive manner possible. The Nazi Party felt confident enough in its power to publicly demonstrate this belief in thought control to begin the infamous book burning episodes. Books that did not match the Nazi ideal were burnt in public - loyal Nazis ransacked libraries to remove the 'offending' books. "Where one burns books, one eventually burns people," commented the author Berthold Brecht.4

Nazi propaganda strategy had several focal points. They created external enemies (countries which signed and were looking to enforce the Treaty of Versailles) and internal enemies (Jews). During the war, German propaganda emphasized the prowess of German arms and the humanity German soldiers had shown to the peoples of occupied territories. Pilots of the Allied bombing fleets were depicted as cowardly murderers.5

Every arm of the country's bureaucracy was involved in the killing process. Parish churches and the Interior Ministry supplied birth records showing who was Jewish; the Post Office delivered the deportation and denaturalization orders; the Finance Ministry confiscated Jewish property; German firms fired Jewish workers and disenfranchised Jewish stockholders; the universities refused to admit Jews, denied degrees to those already studying, and fired Jewish academics; government transport offices arranged the trains for deportation to the camps; German pharmaceutical