The Holocaust Overview

*The Pages are a little out of Order*

Joseph Mengele was notorious in the concentration camps for doing inhumane test and surgeries on prisoners, mostly young twins and the gypsies. Joseph was one of the people at Auchwitz who would decide who dies instantly and who will be forced to perform manual labor, because of this he was nicknamed the angel of death. He was born in Gunzburg, Bavaria March 16, 1911 and studied medicine in Munich. Joseph joined the Nazi party in 1938 because he agreed with the ideology.

Here in the picture you see the few twins that survived Joseph's surgeries and tests. Joseph did many experiments with the children including; injecting chemicals into the eyes to change their color, twin-to-twin transfusions, stitching twins together, castrating or sterilizing twins, or removing limbs and organs. Most of these procedures were done without the use of anesthetic. Usually after the twin would die from surgery the body would be dissected.

Joseph Mengele was important to the Holocaust because he was a high ranking officer at Auchwitz and was one of the highest ranking doctors in the Nazi party. With this Joseph was very powerful and did many experiments on children. Joseph was not crazy he was psychologically normal, he was intelligent and a loving family man. Joseph felt no wrong in what he did.

Personal Statement

In the late 1930's-1945 a horrific event happened that changed history, it is known as the Nazi Holocaust a mass genocide that killed millions. Webster's dictionary defines a holocaust as a thorough destruction with many deaths. Which is exactly what the Nazi's holocaust was. Twelve million non-Aryan people were killed in the concentration camps. Aryan was having Nordic features and being of German decent. In my opinion the Holocaust was efficient it killed many and cost very little because of how the Nazis striped the prisoners of everything they had. What amazes me is that with how bad the prisoners were treated they never lost faith in their religion.

There were many problems after World War II, The Nazis had to face justice, Germany ended up divided by the Berlin wall, and another war had started between America and the Soviet Union. All of these were just some of the effects of World War II and the last two were long-term effects.

The Nazis had to pay for their war crimes, and they did during the Nuremberg Trials that happened from 1945 until 1949. There were 24 men accused and three of them got off all the others got time in prison or the death sentence.

The judges of the Nuremberg Trials

Germany became divided after World War II, deciding over what type of government they should run. East Side Germany became Communist and the West Side became democratic. The wall went up in 1961 and stayed up for 28 years. The main reason of the Berlin Wall was to stop emigration from East Germany.

Right after World War ended there was another threat, and that was the threat of nuclear war. For years there was this fear that any Communist country would launch nuclear weapons at America. This includes the Soviet Union, China and Cuba. In the 1970's there was the Cuban Missile Crisis where Castro the still current leader of Cuba had missiles aimed at America. The Cold War went on until the 1990's with the fall of the Soviet Union who was the main superpower that was feared.

I have one question about the Holocaust. Why is the Nazi Holocaust the only Genocide that is only mentioned? I was listening to Eddie Izzard a famous comedian in Europe and he states that the reason why these other people who do these genocides get away with it is because they do it in their own country and for some reason, we're fine with that.

"Pol Pot killed one point seven million Cambodians, died under house arrest, well done there. Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed, aged seventy-two, well done indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is they killed their own people. And we're sort of fine with that. Hitler killed people next door. Oh, stupid man. After a couple of years we won't stand for that, will we?"

I sat down and thought about it and it's true. When Hitler went and attacked Poland all the other countries came in to stop him, but it was too late England and France could have stopped him when he was taking back the Rhineland. Eddie Izzard also states that we as humans can't handle that much killing we are just incapable of fathoming it.

"You kill one person you go to prison, that's a life sentence. You kill ten people they send you to Texas where they hit you in the head with a brick, because that's what they do. You kill Twenty people they put you in a padded room and stare at you through a tiny window for the rest of your life, and anything more that that we can't handle. Someone just killed 100,000 people we're almost saying "Good job, you killed 100,000 people you must get up real early in the morning."

So the reason that the Holocaust is the only genocide that is really mentioned is because Hitler took it outside of Germany.

The Holocaust had its base set from a long history of Anti-Semitism in Europe. The Nazi party had always had a discrimination against the Jewish people, even before Hitler came into the picture. The Nazis would do anything to make life hard for the Jewish people. For instance they would display propaganda that would label Jewish people as capitalist, communist, and evil money-grubbing figures. Some of these posters would even depict them as vermin such as rats or insects. These posters got the attention of the German people quickly and it affected their attitudes. The Anti-Semitism base helped the Nazis take over Germany.

Because of the Anti-Semitism that the Nazi belief was based on made the Nazi's believe in a social hierarchy. Which meant that your place in society was based on your race. When the Nazi party took control they took advantage of the pervasiveness of the Anti-Semitism and began taking away the rights of the Jewish people in Germany. The plan was to oppress the Jewish people to purify Germany. On April 1, 1933 Hitler announced Boycott's Day, a day where Germans were to boycott Jewish stores, goods doctors, and lawyers. During this time the Jewish people