The Holocaust

The Holocaust was the systematic killing of Jews and other "unfit" individuals by the Nazis during World War II. Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazis during this time, blamed the Jews for Germany's failures, such as its economic problems and for their defeat in World War I. The Holocaust started with the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which stripped Jews of their German citizenship, jobs, and property, and they were forced to wear yellow Stars of David at all times. Then on the night of November 9, 1938, Nazis stormed Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues all across Germany in an attack that is now known as Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass". Even after the attack, the Germans blamed the Jews for the widespread destruction; they were biased and unfairly treated the Jews in their whole country. The Nazis tried to speed up Jewish emigration, but there were not many countries that would accept so many Jewish immigrants. Then, in 1939, Hitler imposed the “Final Solution”, which was a policy of genocide to eliminate all non-Aryans. Political opponents (communists, socialists, liberals, and anarchists), gypsies, freemasons (supporters of the “Jewish conspiracy”), Jehovah’s Witnesses (those who refused to join the army or salute Hitler), and individuals “unfit” to be part of the “master race” (the mentally ill, homosexuals, the mentally deficient, the physically ill, and the terminally ill) were also targeted, in addition to Jews. As part of the Final Solution, Jews were forced to relocate to ghettos, or dismal, overcrowded, segregated Jewish areas that were sealed off with barbed wire and stone walls. There were also numerous concentration camps that were established, which were originally used to imprison political opponents and protestors, but ended up housing thousands of people in horrific living conditions; they worked there until they collapsed, at which point they were killed. In 1942, the Final Stage of the Holocaust was reached, and a meeting in Wannsee decided that a new phase of mass killing would begin: murder by poison gas. Six death camps were established in Poland, each of which could kill as many as 12,000 people a day by cyanide gas. To get rid of the dead bodies afterwards, huge crematoriums were installed to incinerate the corpses, or even to burn individuals alive.