The first concentration camp in the Nazi system, Dachau, opened in March, 1933. By the end of World War II, the Nazis gave a huge system of more than 40,000 camps that stretched across Europe from the French-Spanish border into the conquered Soviet territories, and as far south as Greece and North Africa. The largest number of prisoners were Jews, but people were arrested and locked in prison for a variety of reasons, including family, cultural characteristics and political association. Prisoners were subjected to unbelievable terrors from the moment they arrived in the camps it was a terrible existence that involved a struggle for survival against a system designed to destroy them. A concentration camp is a place where P.O.W (Prisoners of War) were placed usually used for criminals or people with types of religions that the army was against (e.g. Jews etc.)
The Nuremberg Trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany between 1945 and 1949. The trials were held in Nuremberg because its Palace of Justice was undamaged by the end of the war. It was also used for its large prison area. The cause of these trials was the Holocaust, where many Jewish Germans were killed by the Nazis under the rule of a man named Adolf Hitler. The purpose of these trials were to bring Nazi War criminals to justice.
They would mow down row upon row of shivering, half naked adults, and smash the heads of babies with a show of pity or remorse(Wistrich). The psychological effect on those who lived during the Holocaust are beyond any superficial description. Hitler mainly targeted the Jewish population because he defined Jews as a race not a religion. For the period of 12 years million of Jews lived under the Nazi power and it persecution towards them. They held the highest population in all and every camp.
Even before WWII began, gypsies faced persecution; for example: “When the Nuremberg laws were passed in September of 1935, the interpreters of these decrees applied to gypsies as well as jews” (Smelser 2). Identical to Jews being deprived of their civil rights, the Nuremberg laws took away gypsies rights. This act of including gypsies in the Nuremberg laws shows that nazi’s saw gypsies as a threat to the Aryan race, causing gypsies to be first non-Jewish group affected by the holocaust. During the holocaust gypsies faced vast amounts of persecution during the holocaust, for instance: “An estimated of some 20,000 gypsies showed that over 90% should be considered mischlinge (of mixed blood). This solved the problem of having to deal with an Aryan minority” (Smelser 2).
Those people who had hatred against another race thought that they were more supreme. Both things had lots of people dying and lots of incidents happened because of hatred. They both had “groups” of people who tried to be more supreme and hated all other kinds of people. In the rise of Hitler it was the Nazi Party, and in To Kill a Mockingbird it was the farmers and some of the white residents. To Kill a Mockingbird is a book that expresses racism and hatred that affects people.
One of these strategies was concentration camps. The definition of a concentration camp is “a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labour or to await mass execution. The term is most strongly associated with the several hundred camps established by the Nazis in Germany and occupied Europe 1933–45, among the most infamous being Dachau, Belsen, and Auschwitz”. Concentration camps were successfully ran by the Nazi soldiers collecting as many Jews as possible. They would tell the Jews that they were going to work on farms.
He imbibed racist ideas during his stay in Vienna, which he later fled to avoid service in the army (Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2007). After World War 1, Germany was forced to pay reparations to France and Great Britain. People in Germany were upset and angry over this, Hitler took advantage of this and gave them a target to focus their anger and resentment on: the Jewish population. The quote is from the Encyclopeadia judaica, “In June 1934 he had his predecessors as chancellor along with numerous others murdered as a sign of his total control.” This supports the thesis by showing that he had the ambition to do what it takes to gain more power.
The Holocaust is a horrifying subject that started in the early 1940’s and mid-WWII. The Holocaust was formed by Adolf Hitler (Allen 5). He directed a team of people called Nazis to build the concentration camps (Allen 5). The Nazis killed many people during the Holocaust including Jewish men, women, and children. It all started with one camp called Auschwitz where many people died including author and holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel’s family.
During the war, Hitler gathered the “unworthy people” and opened camps in and around Germany, referring to them as work camps. No one knew the horrors that took place in these “work camps”. The multiple “work camps” set up in Germany are now today known as concentration camps. These camps were where the undesirable were sent to die. Both Life is Beautiful and Weissova sketch are about the Holocaust and the cruelty showed their experiences there.
Known as the Second Reich, it quickly gained power and colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The empire was subsequently dismantled following their defeat in World War I, leading to economic depression, massive unemployment rates, and the country was verging on civil war for years. Establishing the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler changed this by first taking power in 1933. He and his new Nazi party quickly went on a crusade to conquer Europe and exterminate everyone who he thought were beneath him and not part of the superior race. He felt that these races, particularly Jews, were responsible for their loss in World War I.
Nazis came to rise after Adolf Hitler took control of Germany in early 1933. They started to invade other countries around them and succeeded in occupying almost all of Europe. Many people didn’t agree with the methods the Nazis used and therefore, started to rebel. To stop these rebels or the so-called “enemies of the state”, Nazis had started to construct concentration camps. According to The Holocaust Explained, “In Nazi Germany after 1933, and across Nazi controlled Europe, between 1938 and 1945, concentration camps became a major way in which Nazi imposed their control (Holocaust Explained, 1)”.
Starting in the mid 1930’s, Hitler came to power and immediately ordered the execution of those he deemed as “non-aryan.” Because of the ever-growing number of undesirables that Nazis were persecuting, the use of concentration camps became necessary to imprison and execute these prisoners in secret. There were three different types of camps that Hitler utilized and the functions of each of these varied depending on several factors such as size, location, and the needs of the Germans. Jewish people were sent to different types of camps such as labor camps where they worked, death camps where the Nazis sent the people to be killed, or concentration camps which were a combination of both.
January 30, 1933: President Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany. This date in History was the start to one of the most tragic events the human civilization has ever experienced. This was the start of the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler grew up in Austria and later moved to germany and fought in World War 1.
Events leading to the Wannnsee Conference January of 1933 the Nazi party officially took power in Germany and Hitler becomes chancellor. At this time Jews were living in every country in Europe and rightfully so. This was about a total of 9 million Jews who will suddenly lose everything they worked for.? The first of many concentration camps was Dachau right near Munich. At this camp the prisoners were made up of people who opposed the new regime and could cause problems down the road for Hitler?s plan.
Ever since it was constructed on July 16, 1937, Buchenwald’s purpose was to imprison opponents. Buchenwald was divided into three parts- the large camp which housed prisoners with some seniority, the small camp were prisoners were kept in quarantine, and the tent camp set up for Polish prisoners sent there after the German invasion of Poland. The first group of prisoners consisting of 149 prisoners, were mostly political detainees and criminals, was brought to the site. The German Jews that arrived in 1938 were subjected to extraordinary cruel treatment, working for fourteen to fifth-teen hours a day and enduring abominable living conditions. Hitler thought that these people were a problem, and what does he do with problems?