Genocide is the deliberate and systematic killing of a large group of people, usually an ethnic group or nation. Some people argue this was not genocide because it is claimed that it was not deliberate or systematic, while they are somewhat correct in the killings not being systematic rather a free for all, but the murders were most definitely deliberate. I think that it was genocidal in that there was some organisation to the killings and as we know today many people have not even heard of the Armenians so the mass killings are obvious. Therefore I wanted to research the Armenian Genocide and my focus questions are: Why did the genocide occur? What happened during the genocide?
People sent to Auschwitz were used as forced laborers for the war and other jobs. Others were sent to Auschwitz for barbaric medical experiments. Many of those experiments were done on twins, dwarfs, and infants. “Between late April and early July 1944, approximately 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported, around 426,000
Inside these sectionalized camps people were separated by gender, country of origin, captured enemies of state and their sexual orientation. Roma and Jewish families were ripped apart from each other as part of the Nazi effort to inflict as much emotional and psychological pain as possible. Prisoners were lined up by gender and physicians examined them as part of the selection process to decide who would go into labor camps or who would be put to death (Auschwitz- Birkenau 1). Living conditions at labor camps were less than ideal and more often than not people died from the strenuous activity. The SS guards at the camp worked the people relentlessly and once they became too weak to work they killed them in the gas chambers.
The biggest concentration camp where most of the Jews went and were killed was Auschwitz. The Jewish were put through a time of unfairness and had no say on how they could live their lives during this time period. To begin with, the Nazis set up many concentration camps to murder a mass number of Jews that stayed there. “ the Nazis administered a massive 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” (Daily Life..). Some of the major camps were Auschwitz, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald.
Ghettos were established by the Nazis in order to separate and closely maintain the Jewish population across Europe. Concentration camps were also put into operation. The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was the most deadly, having claimed the lives of nearly 1.1 million people. In these “death camps” Jews, along with other minority groups, were imprisoned in these torturous places of death. During their sentences, the prisoners would suffer mental and physical torture that no one would ever wish to go through.
The extermination was state-sanctioned by the Ottoman Empire in response to protests by Armenians. The Ottoman military assisted by Turkish citizens’ pillaged Armenian villages and cities and massacred their citizens. According to reports over a hundred of thousand Armenians were murdered. The next incident would occur again a few years later in 1915 to 1918 and reemerge once again in 1920 and continue until 1923. Witness accounts of the Armenian Genocide suggest that Ottoman government during this time frame began collecting, deporting and executing three hundred Armenian leaders.
There is no positive gain to being merciful nor is there any negative result of murder. The regime truly does not care and are ignoring how they are dehumanizing the population by releasing this statement.The importance of the people is being minimized to nothing. The prisoners in the labor camps were not the only victims of dehumanization. People who escaped murder became unpaid laborers, working on minimum rations and for impossibly long hours. They slept and ate in uncomfortable places purposefully chosen to be as far as possible from their old homes.
During those four years, many Jews died one way or another. But after 1938, all authority of imprisonment fell to the Nazis (www.ushmm.org Concentration Camps). This was the cause that forced nearly all Jews into cattle cars within a month. The Jews were convinced by the Nazis that they were just being relocated, but they were going to the so-called “Shower rooms,” but they were really gas chambers disguised(Blohm 48). Many of the concentration camps were improper, lacked protection from the weather, and one was just a series of tunnels inside a mountain that the Jews were forced on to build a secret weapon(Blohm 28) Many different countries did liberate the Jews.
The Nazis deprived concentration camp inmates of their natural human rights, and of any other humanity they had left in them. Even the process of arriving at the concentration camp was dehumanizing and inhumane. First, the Jews were forced out of their homes, which is a huge part of a person's identity. Next, they were loaded onto trains where they were with way too many people for one train car. The train rides lasted up to 10 days.
In the end of it all, many belonging where found, including human hair, hair brushes, and clothes, along with the suitcases of the Jews who were forced to give them up (Liberation). The total death count from the Holocaust was around seven million Jews, and other individuals (The Holocaust). The Holocaust was a time in history when about seven million people were killed in Europe by being forced to live in ghettos and eventually being deported to live in concentration camps where they were gassed, tortured, worked, or starved to death, until the Allied forces liberated the small amount of remaining survivors. The world has learned of dictatorship, war, and mass genocide, creating a larger understanding of the world. The world is, and will forevermore teach the Holocaust to younger generations for years to