Michael Harper Research Paper 102-127[1]

7/30/2019 Michael Harper Research Paper 102-127[1]

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Research Paper

Holocaust Overview

Michael Harper

Mr. Neuburger

English Comp 102-127

4 December 2012


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As of this date, there is no event in history that is more horrific or tragic than the

Holocaust. Although, this is a major part of history many people do not comprehend the events

that actually took place during this time. The Nazis systematically killed over twelve million

Jews during a two and a half year time period. It is very important that people understand why

and how this happened in order to stop history from repeating itself. In order to completely

understand one must first know how the Nazis rose to power.

Nazis Rise to Power

The Nazis rise to power was not a quick process by any means. It took nearly fourteen

years for the Nazi Party to gain full control of the German Government. According to the article

Rise of the Nazis and Beginning of Persecution, Adolf Hitler joined the National Socialist

Party in 1919 shortly after being injured in World War I. Hitler quickly rose to the leadership

role due to his emotional and captive speeches. In 1923,

Hitler led a group of party activists to overtake Munich but

they failed and he found himself in prison. While Hitler was

in prison he wrote his book Mein Kampf, which expressed

his ideas about racial theory and Nazi global dominion .

While in prison Hitler realized that he needed to get in to the

democratic government. In the 1924 Reichstag elections, the

party received three percent of the votes and they were able to

send fourteen delegates to the parliament. Although the party had fourteen delegates in office at

the next election in 1928 they did not receive as much support and only twelve delegates were

sent in. It wasnt until 1930 that there was a turnaround. It was the first elections after the

economic crisis that the Nazis received 18.3 percent of the votes and 107 delegates were sent to

Hitler in Prison

http://bit.ly/Sf5pOr


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the Reichstag, Reichstag is the German Parliament. In 1932 during the month of July the Nazis

became the largest faction in the House with 230 mandates. They were a political force that

acceded to power legitimately and made an impact. Paul von Hindenburg, the President at the

time, gave Hitler the mandate to form a government. Hitler became Chancellor on January 30,

1933 (Yad Vashem).

Nazis Views on JewsAnti-Semitism

The Nazi leaders soon began to persecute German Jews after they assumed power. They

had made the promise to do so since the 1920s as explains, the United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum (USHMM). From 1933 until the beginning of the war in 1939, the first six

years of Hitlers dictatorship, Jews could feel the effects of more than 400 decrees and

regulations that had restricted all parts of their private and public lives. Most of the laws had

been issued by the German administration and were

national laws affecting all Jews. States and regions were

also able to create their own decrees in their communities.

Every level of government had individuals that were

involved in the persecution of Jews. Hundreds of people

were part of conceiving, discussing, and drafting,

adopting, enforcing, and supporting anti-Jewish

legislation. There was not any corner of Germany that was untouched. Anti-Semitism eventually

led to the creation of Nuremberg Laws (Anti-Jewish Legislation in Prewar Germany).

Nuremberg Laws

The first attempt by the Nazi government to define the Jews was Nuremberg Laws. The

Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team (HEART) describes that, the Nuremberg Laws

Anti-Jewish sign. It reads Jews not wanted here.

http://bit.ly/hI6aZd


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played a pivotal role in the process that led to their annihilation. The Law for the Protection of

German Blood and German Honor was the first law. This first law prohibited marriages and

extra-marital intercourse between Jews and Germans.

It also included the prohibition of German females who

are under the age of forty-five to work in Jewish

households. The Reich Citizenship Law was the second

law. This law stripped Jews of their German citizenship.

The Nuremberg Laws made the unofficial and particular

measures taken against Jews up to 1935 more formal. It

was stressed, by the Nazi leaders, that the consistency of this legislation with the Party program

demanded that Jews were stripped of their rights as citizens. In Nazi Germany Hitler has more

direct control over the government and political attitude to Jews. During the time of 1937-1938

harsh new laws were put in place and the segregation of Jews from the German population

started. Over time more laws were created to segregate Jews. Each new law furthered the

reducing of their rights as human beings and effectively separated them from the German

population (The Nuremberg Laws).

Kristallnacht

During the night of November 9, 1938 and into the next day, a massive, coordinated

attack on Jews took place throughout the German Reich. It has come to be known as

Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass. The article Kristallnacht explains, this attack started

after a seventeen year old Jew named Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed a member of the

Embassy in Paris for the awful treatment his father and family received at the hands of the Nazis

in Germany. Grynszpans family along with over 15,000 other Jews had been expelled from

Paper that was printed on Sept 15, 1935 that showsthe Nuremberg Laws passed

http://bit.ly/SR64FG


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A Synagogue in Berlin after Kristallnacht

http://bit.ly/UX99

Germany with no warning on October 27. They had been forcibly transported in boxcars and

dumped at the Polish border. The shooting provided

an opportunity for the Germans to rise in bloody

vengeance against the Jews for Adolf Hitler and

Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister. On the

night of November 9 the Nazi storm troopers also

members of the SS and Hitler Youth brutalized

women and children, broke into and destroyed Jewish homes, and beat and murdered Jews.

Approximately 25,000 Jewish men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps later. They

were brutalized often and some were even randomly chosen to be beaten to death by SS guards

(The History Place).

Rounding up JewsGhettos

Only a few personal items were permitted to be taken to the ghettos with the Jews.

According to Yad Vashem Jews were required to gather at specific locations which were usually

train stations. Anyone who did not keep up with the group or did not obey orders was shot. The

Jews were loaded into crowded cattle cars at the train stations. They did not have proper

ventilation and the Jews were kept in the cars for days without food or water until they reached

their destination. The ghettos were extremely crowded and most of them did not have basic

electrical and sanitary infrastructure. There was not enough food for as many people they had in

the ghettos. The Germans took brutal measures against anyone who tried to smuggle food. They

would do both public and private executions. Increased starvation caused the inhabitants of the

ghettos to become ill or even die. In 1940 on April 30, the ghetto in Lodz, Poland was

established. The Lodz ghetto was sealed off by wooden fences and barbed-wire fences. The


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Jews were packed into the ghetto without any electricity or water. Many Jews died from disease

and starvation. Jews, even young children, worked for the Germans while in the Lodz ghetto.

Many of the Germans thought of the ghetto as a pause in the task at hand, which was

extermination. It was in January of 1942 that deportation

from Lodz to Chelmno murder site started. The Jews

were murdered by gas vans. Lists were created of

candidates for deportation and organized for rounding up

Jews. By the end of the year nearly half the Jews who

had been forced into Lodz had been murdered in

Chelmno. The murders of Jews in the Lodz ghetto and other surrounding ghettos continued until

January 1945 (Lodz Ghetto).

The Nazis established the largest ghetto in all of Europe in Warsaw, the capital of Poland.

The article Warsaw Ghetto states, on November 16 that the Jews were forced inside the area of

the ghetto. Large amounts of refugees had been transported to Warsaw which brought the ghetto

population to 450,000. The Jews were surrounded by walls that they had built themselves.

Living conditions were unbearable and like the other ghettos many Jews died from disease and

starvation. More than 80,000 Jews died in the ghetto and in July of 1942 the deportations to the

death camp Treblinka started (Yad Vashem).

The Theresienstadt (Terezin) ghetto was established by the Nazis in 1941 as stated by the

article Theresienstadt. It was mostly made up of elderly Jews and people of special merit in

the Reich and many Jews from the Netherlands and Denmark. This ghetto was thought of as a

model Jewish settlement. Reports of the death camps started to emerge at the end of 1943.

Nazis decided to present Theresienstadt to an investigative commission of the International Red

Policeman checking Jews in at Lodz Ghetto

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Cross. In order to prepare for the commissions visit the Nazis deported Jews to Auschwitz so

they could reduce the overcrowding the ghetto. The commission arrived in the ghetto in June of

1944 on the 23. The Nazis had created fake stores, a bank, school, and coffee house and

arranged for the commission to meet with certain prisoners beforehand. Disease, overcrowding,

sanitary conditions and malnourishment led to the death of many Jews. In 1942 15,891 people

died in the ghetto. That was half the population of Theresienstadt. Over 155,000 Jews passed

through the ghetto up until it was liberated in April of 1945. 88,000 Jews were deported to the

death camps and 35,440 dies in the ghetto. Most Jews were either murdered in the death camps

or died in the ghettos (Yad Vashem).

Wannsee ConferenceThe Final Solution

On January 20, 1942 the Wannsee Conference was held. The Holocaust History Project

states that it was Chief of the Security Police and Security Service, SS-Lieutenant General

Reinhard Heydrich that presided over the conference. The phrase Final Solution of the Jewish

Problem had taken on different increasingly ominous meanings to the Nazis in the years leading

up to World War II. Its meanings included voluntary emigration, confining Jews in the ghettos,

forcing them into concentration camps and extermination.

It was to be made clear that, now, Heydrich referred to

specifically the murder of all European Jews. It is said

that Heydrich makes it clear that no matter the way they

go, natural causes or murder, none would be allowed to

survive. By the time the meeting took place the

construction of the death camps in Belzec and Chelmno,

The Wannsee Villa, location of the Wannsee

Conference

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with their gassing facilities, were already underway. The Wannsee Conference was to clarify the

points of the European Jews demise, not to decide their fate (Wannsee Conference).

Extermination Methods

There were several different ways the Nazis would kill the Jews. According to the article

The Killing Evolution the Nazis experimented with killing techniques and discussed their

successes and failures with each other. At the beginning murder was done at close range. Death

by firing squad was put to a stop after a General was worried about the effects it would have on

the SS Soldiers committing the murders. Carbon monoxide was another way the Nazis killed the

Jews. They would make the Jews take showers, but

instead of water they had the showerheads connected to

canisters of carbon monoxide. The thought was that gas

was cheaper than bullets and none of the Nazis would

have to directly take a life. Nazis also had Jews get into

large vans and they would drive them around. While the

van was driving to the burial location the fumes from the

van would be rerouted back into the van, killing the Jews that were inside. Another form of

execution was using Zyklon B. It was the chemical that was used to kill live in the prisoners

clothing. There was a large supply of it and fairly easy to access. When the crystals were

exposed to the proper heat they would release lethal gas. The most popular from of execution

were the gas chambers. The Nazis could kill a large number of Jews at a time by putting them in

the gas chambers and releasing the carbon monoxide. It was the quickest and easiest way for the

Nazis to eliminate a large number of Jews at a time (PBS).

Inside view of a gas chamberhttp://bit.ly/RAzbxR


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Aschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp

http://bit.ly/X42Y85

The Death Camps

Auschwitz was the largest Nazi death camp throughout Europe. The Jewish Virtual

Library writes that it could hold around 150,000 inmates at a time. In June 1940 the camp

received its first transport of prisoners. Auschwitz quickly became known for its torturing and

its mass shootings. The first part of the camp was known as Auschwitz I. Roughly two miles

away from Auschwitz I a second part of the camp was

constructed. It became known as Birkenau or

Auschwitz II. After the Final Solution was put into

place Auschwitz became the center of the mass

destruction of the European Jews. Most of them were

killed in gas chambers, but many died from starvation,

forced labor, disease, shooting squads, and terrible

medical experiments. The Jews living in Europe were marked, by the Nazis, for total

extermination, no matter their age, sex, occupation, citizenship or political views. They were

killed because they were Jews, and only because they were Jews. When inmates were first

brought to the camp they would go through a selection process. Anyone that was considered

by the SS physicians to be unfit for labor was sent to be killed in the gas chambers. Any Jew that

was sick considered elderly, pregnant women and children were sent to the gas chambers. On

average, 70-75% of each transport was sent to their immediate death. The Jews that were sent to

their immediate death were never put in the camp records, so they received no serial numbers

and were not registered. This makes it impossible to know the exact number of victims. The

Jews that the SS physicians deemed fit for slave labor was registered and a serial number was

tattooed on their arm. They were then undressed, deloused, their body hair was shaven off, they


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were showered and entered into the camp. At Birkenau only approximately ten percent of the

Jewish transports were registered rather than sent straight to the death chambers. In 1942 two

provisional gas chambers were constructed in the spring. After Jews were killed in the gas

chambers, their bodies were taken to pits where they were later burned in the open. During the

time period of January 1942 to March 1943 175,000 Jews were killed in the gas chambers in

Birkenau. Out of those 105,000 were gassed to death from January to March 1943. The Jews

who were selected to die were undressed in the undressing room and were then pushed into the

gas chambers. It only took approximately twenty minutes for everyone in the gas chambers to

die. New facilities were opened on March 31, 1943 and April 4, 1943. After these new facilities

were opened from April 1943 to March 1944, 160,000 Jews were killed in Birkenau. A railroad

spur line was built in May of 1944. It went right through the camp to make the handling of the

tens of thousands of Jews, deported in the spring and summer, easier and quicker. Birkenau

surpassed all previous records of mass killings during this time, up to November of 1944. This

was when all the other death camps had been abandoned. 585,000 Jews being gassed was the

result of the deportations and liquidation of the remaining Polish ghettos. Auschwitz-Birkenau

became the most notorious killing site of all time because of this period (Auschwitz-Birkenau

Concentration Camp).

There were several other death camps that The Jewish Virtual Library discusses. Some

of the estimated numbers of murders reached up to 850,000 Jews at one camp. Most of the death

camps used gas chambers. There were also firing squads, hangings, gas vans and terrible

experiments. Jews were also tortured to death on occasion. After being murdered their bodies

were burned either outside in the open or in crematories. All camps were stopped during the

year of 1945 (Concentration Camps).


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Liberation

During the Holocaust, before Liberation, victims received help from rescuers. According

to A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust brave citizens would hide thousands of Jews and help

keep them safe. These citizens kept the Jews in hiding until after the liberation of the death

camps and defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied Forces. People who rescued Jews from the

Nazi death camps put themselves in great danger. If you were found hiding a Jew you were

either shot or hanged publicly as a warning to others (Rescue and Liberation).

Allied troops began to uncover concentration camps and liberated the first camp in the

summer of 1944 in Poland. Holocaust Memorial Day trust states that Nazi forces began to burn

the mass graves and the crematoria after hearing about the first liberation. Prisoners were forced

to go on the death march. This is when the prisoners were made to walk into the interior of

Germany. Many of them died on the death march due

to starvation and ill-treatment. In late 1944, Soviet troops

also overran three other sites. It was on January 27, 1945

that the Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Several thousand emaciated survivors were found along

with the remains of the gas chambers and crematoria the

Nazis had tried to destroy. In the months following the

Soviets liberated three more camps. US troops liberated a camp in April of 1945 and then

followed with three more camps. Then the British troops liberated a camp in April 1945

(Liberation, Resistance and Resources).

After liberation started the liberators had to worry about all the medical problems. Dr.

Stephen Hart discusses the relief efforts to get rid of all the disease. It is estimated that of the

Jews celebrating on liberation day

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inmates that were found still living nearly half were seriously ill. The Jews that were rescued

had to be washed, disinfected and deloused. They were then rehydrated and given food, while

being treated for their illnesses. Despite all the efforts to save them some of them were just too

sick to be saved. After all the inmates were removed many camps were burned down to help

prevent the spreading of disease (Liberation of the Concentration Camps).

Even after researching the Holocaust it is extremely hard to comprehend all the terrible

events that took place. Over 12 million Jews died during the Holocaust from starvation, disease,

malnourishment, gas chambers and the Nazis. There is not any one event in history that has

taken place that is as horrific as the Holocaust. It is important that people understand what led to

the Holocaust so that it is made sure that history does not repeat itself.


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Works Cited

"Anti-Jewish Legislation in Prewar Germany." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012

"Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camps."Jewish Virtual Library. The American-Israeli

Cooperative Enterprise, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

"Concentration Camps."Jewish Virtual Library. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise,

n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

Hart, Stephen A. "Liberation of the Concentration Camps."BBC. BBC, 17 Feb. 2011. Web. 12

Nov. 2012.

"Kristallnacht." The History Place. The History Place, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012.

"Liberation, Resistance, & Rescuers."Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Holocaust Memorial Day

Trust, 6 Jan. 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

"Lodz Ghettos." Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem, n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.

"Rescue and Liberation."A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. Florida Center for Instructional

Technology, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2012.

"Rise of the Nazis and Beginning of Persecution." Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem, n.d. Web. 23 Oct.

2012.

"The Killing Evolution." PBS. Community Television of Southern California, n.d. Web. 4 Oct.

2012.

"The Nuremberg Laws."Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. Holocaust Education

& Archive Research Team, n.d. Web. 4 Oct. 2012.

"Theresienstadt." Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem, n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.


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"Wannsee Conference." The Holocaust History Project. The Holocaust History Project, n.d.

Web. 4 Oct. 2012.

"Warsaw Ghettos." Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem, n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.

Michael,

You are an outstanding writer and should be proud of this paper. Outside of adding those

transition words/phrases and some other minor mechanics issues this a a very well done

paper. See below for your score.


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Points Available

Score

40Content paper demonstrates understanding

and confidence about topic 40

20Sources uses only primary and secondary

sources 20

40In-Text Citations integrates sources within

text with effective use of signal words and

phrases30

35 Formatting properly uses MLA formatting 35

25Works Cited works cited page has the

required number of sources and is properly

formatted25

15Pictures uses pictures to enhance the text

with effective captions and source information 15

25Writing Mechanics Paper is free from errors

in spelling, punctuation, etc. 20

Total = 200

Total Score

185

Michael Harper Research Paper 102-127[1]

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