History of the Holocaust: an Overview
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Wolran Kim
March 2013
The Holocaust originally means Jewish burned sacrifices, but now it indicates a terrible massacre, which was outside the normal course of history. This has no historical precedent from the fact that one country’s power planed circumspectly and was practiced for only a short period. The Nazi party and German government leaders decided “the final solution of the Jewish question” in Berlin on January 1942. This “Final Solution” would be killing 11 million European Jews from more than 20 countries.
However, they never officially used the words massacre or execution and this heinous plan already slaughtered Jews on the territory of the Soviet Union and Poland before this Wannsee Conference. During 1942, Jewish people of all ages and both sexes were transported from all over Europe to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and four other major killing centers in German occupied Poland by way of trainload. “During World War II (1939-1945), the Germans and their collaborators killed or caused the deaths of up to 6 million Jews.” Nazi ideologues, which believed that Jews are a “dangerous race” who threatened the “superior Aryan race,” was race science developing from extreme nationalism, financial insecurity, and fear of communism.
The history of the Holocaust divided into two main sections, 1933-1939 and 1939-1946, is based on World War II. The first section of the Holocaust started with Adolf Hitler’s new position as chancellor in 1933. His dictatorial power ended German democracy quickly, and the suspension of all individual freedoms of press, speech, and assembly was just the beginning of this tragedy. The Nazis began to practice their racial ideology of superiority as the “master race”, and persecution of the Jews began right after his nomination to Prime Minister. Jews, less than one percent of the population (about 525,000), became the scapegoat of Germany’s economic depression and the country’s defeat in World War I (1914-18).
The Jews were no longer citizens. “In 1935, Jews proclaimed at Nuremberg made Jew second-class citizens.” New anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews educationally, socially, economically, and politically between 1937 and 1939. Although Jews were the Nazi hatred’s main target, the Nazis persecuted physically or mentally handicapped people, Roma (Gypsies), Blacks, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses through sterilization, conviction, and imprisonment in concentration camps. About half the German-Jews and more than two-thirds of the Austrian-Jews fled Nazi persecution between 1933 and 1939.
The second section of the Holocaust started with the beginning of World War II from the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Germany slew political, social, and religious leaders in Poland, and carried out segregation and resettlement quickly. At the beginning of the war, the majority of European Jews were under the control of the Nazi regime. Their secret “euthanasia” program continued institutional massacre of Jews, Roma, and handicapped people by lethal injection, forced starvation, and gas chambers. This program became a valuable precursor for the Nazi's atrocities, the Final Solution.
The concentration camps were over flooded from World War II, and the Germans created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps to imprison Jews, Roma, other victims of racial and ethnic hatred, political opponents, and resistance fighters. The six killing sites were chosen due to location and transportation, and large-scale massacres were carried out between December 1941 and November 1943 by gassing in each periodically. Auschwitz-Birkenau camp had the largest number of killings with 1 million people being a daily routine.
Resistance existed in almost every concentration camp and ghetto; however, aid to Holocaust victims was not a priority of these organization and their efforts were slight in front of the superior German force. The U.S. government did not pursue to rescue victims of Nazism during the war because of their concentration on winning the war. At the end of the war in late 1944, the Germans tried to cover up the evidence of genocide and prevent prisoners’ liberation. Nazi Germany collapsed in May 1945, and the Holocaust emerged in a new figure as the worst blemish of mankind.
Germany’s huge crime ended with war, but the Allied victors of World War II faced two immediate problems: judgment of Nazi war criminals and providing for displace persons (DPs) and refugees. The trials of the perpetrators were awfully insignificant compared to the immense victims of the Holocaust. Under the support of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), 13 of those convicted were sentenced to death and 7 or more to life imprisonment or under 20 years in the major trial between 1945 and 1946. Trials of German war criminals and their organizations were conducted during the late 1940s and early 1950s in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet. However, “many war criminals were never brought to trial or punished.” The judgment of history is often slow, on the border of the law, unjust, or caught in a trap. These efforts such as the Frankfurt Trial of Auschwitz in the 1960s continue to this day.
A large number of DPs wandered again because of the aftermath of the Holocaust. The Allies repatriated more than 6 million DPs to their home countries. Unfortunately, the Allied governments were preoccupied with their own problems, and most of the countries’ doors were closed to Jews except for a small number of refugees. Most Jewish DPs were unwilling or unable to return to Eastern Europe because of postwar anti-Semitism, and they were eager to leave Europe in spite of obstacles such as restrictive immigration legislation and the Depression. The Displaced Persons Act of U.S. and the independence of Israel in 1948 eased the Jewish refugee crisis. Even though “the last DP camp closed in Germany in 1957,” the wreckage of the Holocaust remains fresh even now with problems of national or ethnic identity and the cruelty of humans. The history of the Holocaust still continues in different circumstances such as the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the ethnic conflict in Rwanda, and the war in Bosnia.
======================================
Wolran Kim
March 2013
The Holocaust originally means Jewish burned sacrifices, but now it indicates a terrible massacre, which was outside the normal course of history. This has no historical precedent from the fact that one country’s power planed circumspectly and was practiced for only a short period. The Nazi party and German government leaders decided “the final solution of the Jewish question” in Berlin on January 1942. This “Final Solution” would be killing 11 million European Jews from more than 20 countries.
However, they never officially used the words massacre or execution and this heinous plan already slaughtered Jews on the territory of the Soviet Union and Poland before this Wannsee Conference. During 1942, Jewish people of all ages and both sexes were transported from all over Europe to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and four other major killing centers in German occupied Poland by way of trainload. “During World War II (1939-1945), the Germans and their collaborators killed or caused the deaths of up to 6 million Jews.” Nazi ideologues, which believed that Jews are a “dangerous race” who threatened the “superior Aryan race,” was race science developing from extreme nationalism, financial insecurity, and fear of communism.
The history of the Holocaust divided into two main sections, 1933-1939 and 1939-1946, is based on World War II. The first section of the Holocaust started with Adolf Hitler’s new position as chancellor in 1933. His dictatorial power ended German democracy quickly, and the suspension of all individual freedoms of press, speech, and assembly was just the beginning of this tragedy. The Nazis began to practice their racial ideology of superiority as the “master race”, and persecution of the Jews began right after his nomination to Prime Minister. Jews, less than one percent of the population (about 525,000), became the scapegoat of Germany’s economic depression and the country’s defeat in World War I (1914-18).
The Jews were no longer citizens. “In 1935, Jews proclaimed at Nuremberg made Jew second-class citizens.” New anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews educationally, socially, economically, and politically between 1937 and 1939. Although Jews were the Nazi hatred’s main target, the Nazis persecuted physically or mentally handicapped people, Roma (Gypsies), Blacks, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses through sterilization, conviction, and imprisonment in concentration camps. About half the German-Jews and more than two-thirds of the Austrian-Jews fled Nazi persecution between 1933 and 1939.
The second section of the Holocaust started with the beginning of World War II from the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Germany slew political, social, and religious leaders in Poland, and carried out segregation and resettlement quickly. At the beginning of the war, the majority of European Jews were under the control of the Nazi regime. Their secret “euthanasia” program continued institutional massacre of Jews, Roma, and handicapped people by lethal injection, forced starvation, and gas chambers. This program became a valuable precursor for the Nazi's atrocities, the Final Solution.
The concentration camps were over flooded from World War II, and the Germans created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps to imprison Jews, Roma, other victims of racial and ethnic hatred, political opponents, and resistance fighters. The six killing sites were chosen due to location and transportation, and large-scale massacres were carried out between December 1941 and November 1943 by gassing in each periodically. Auschwitz-Birkenau camp had the largest number of killings with 1 million people being a daily routine.
Resistance existed in almost every concentration camp and ghetto; however, aid to Holocaust victims was not a priority of these organization and their efforts were slight in front of the superior German force. The U.S. government did not pursue to rescue victims of Nazism during the war because of their concentration on winning the war. At the end of the war in late 1944, the Germans tried to cover up the evidence of genocide and prevent prisoners’ liberation. Nazi Germany collapsed in May 1945, and the Holocaust emerged in a new figure as the worst blemish of mankind.
Germany’s huge crime ended with war, but the Allied victors of World War II faced two immediate problems: judgment of Nazi war criminals and providing for displace persons (DPs) and refugees. The trials of the perpetrators were awfully insignificant compared to the immense victims of the Holocaust. Under the support of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), 13 of those convicted were sentenced to death and 7 or more to life imprisonment or under 20 years in the major trial between 1945 and 1946. Trials of German war criminals and their organizations were conducted during the late 1940s and early 1950s in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet. However, “many war criminals were never brought to trial or punished.” The judgment of history is often slow, on the border of the law, unjust, or caught in a trap. These efforts such as the Frankfurt Trial of Auschwitz in the 1960s continue to this day.
A large number of DPs wandered again because of the aftermath of the Holocaust. The Allies repatriated more than 6 million DPs to their home countries. Unfortunately, the Allied governments were preoccupied with their own problems, and most of the countries’ doors were closed to Jews except for a small number of refugees. Most Jewish DPs were unwilling or unable to return to Eastern Europe because of postwar anti-Semitism, and they were eager to leave Europe in spite of obstacles such as restrictive immigration legislation and the Depression. The Displaced Persons Act of U.S. and the independence of Israel in 1948 eased the Jewish refugee crisis. Even though “the last DP camp closed in Germany in 1957,” the wreckage of the Holocaust remains fresh even now with problems of national or ethnic identity and the cruelty of humans. The history of the Holocaust still continues in different circumstances such as the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the ethnic conflict in Rwanda, and the war in Bosnia.