Essay On The Holocaust In Poland

Holocaust in Poland

The Holocaust, also known as Shoah, was a genocide officially authorized and executed by the Third Reich during World War II. The Holocaust in German-occupied Poland involved the implementation of German policy of systematic and mostly effective annihilation of the indigenous Polish-Jewish population. Persecution of the Jews in Poland began immediately after the German invasion, which took place in 1939, particularly in urban areas. After the German attack on the Soviet sites in eastern Poland in June 1941, German police units, and special-task Einsatzgruppen, operated behind the front lines to shoot Himmler’s “dangerous elements” independently of the army, which consist of Jews and political opponents of Nazism. In the

As Germans had been defeated in the First World War, they were experiencing great economic and social hardship during the late 1920 and early 1930s. They were forced to pay huge compensations to the Allies, and they suffered terrible inflation and mass unemployment. Hitler scapegoated the Jews for the hardship, and came up with anti-Semitic policies, which later led to a complex plan to eliminate the Jewish people. The main actors of the holocaust in Poland were Hitler, the Nazis, Jews and Poles. The greatest number of Gentile rescuers of Jews during that time were the Poles, despite the fact that only in Poland were people immediately executed if caught trying to save Jews. The historical accounts denoted that Hitler had a specific plan for Poles, whom he hated almost as much as he hated Jews. Hitler stated that in order to obtain the living space Germans needed, they must to eradicate the Poles; all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Poland lost six million citizens, which was about one-fifth of its population. Three million of the dead were Polish Christians who helped the Jews escape, and the other three million were Polish