Nowhere to sleep, little food and water. These people were treated and housed as slaves, and even slaves were treated better the how they Jews were treated in the Holocaust. All in all, these were some of the most important reasons of how Jewish lives were dehumanized. Jews were the victims of dehumanization. They got torchered and treated as nothing more than “ things”.
You should care about this topic, because sometimes, history can repeat itself. A lot of people died, there was an extreme amount of segregation, and people were not treated like people, but as a lesser object. Some may have family who have been through the holocaust, or you can relate because you felt lesser for being a certain way. Treat people as equals, even if you don’t like them for their differences, because in the end, they are all people trying to survive in a world with stubborn
The Holocaust provided lessons to us on religious persecution. We now know it is wrong to discriminate against someone on their religion, and that it should not matter what religion a person is. Here are a couple religious groups that have been persecuted throughout history. Two examples are the Roma Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses (Christians). The Gypsies, most like the Jews, were moved by Nazis to unusual areas, and almost the entire race of Gypsies in Eastern Europe was wiped out.
The 20th century was a time of both success and sadness, triumph and tragedy, however, no event in European history has been quite as disheartening as the Nazi Holocaust, the darkest hour in European History. In less than a decade, The Nazi Party murdered well over 6,000,000 Jews. 6,000,000 mothers, children, fathers, even babies. This tragedy was justified on the grounds that the people of the Jewish population were subhuman, a burden to the Nazi regime. Similar to the Jewish population of Europe, the people of Salem in The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, were unfairly sentenced to death without any justifiable reasoning, other than suspicion and hatred.
The mass murder defined the furthest boundaries of evil known to mankind by the guiltless genocide of nearly an entire ethnic race. Within a matter of years, over nine million innocent people were massacred. Events like these have horrified generations throughout time and to this day, there are a few survivors left to tell their own personal stories of the Holocaust and what they had to go through . Some of these survivors have shared their own personal stories through literature. In the stories “Dancing With G-D” by Yitta Halberstam and Judith Leventhal fifty boys are fulfilled with courage and strength, “Twins Survival Story” published by “CBN” Eva Mozes Kor is able to forgive the Nazis after all the harm they had caused her mentally and physically and “The Diary Of A Young Girl” written by Anne Frank and edited by Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler, in where Anne Frank is able to maintain a level optimism during a time of hatred toward the Jews.
From seizing property and business, through sterilization, and finally to the most brutal measures - concentration camps - Nazi Germans not only killed Jewish people but stripped them off their dignity and humanity (USHMM). There was no distinction between men, women and children, or old and young people. Jews were brought to concentration camps where they were either selected for hard manual labour or were taken to the gas chambers, where they were killed by poisonous gasses. Those, who were chosen to work, usually had to work until they collapsed dead, so ultimately there was no option for escape. Only in Aushwitz, over 1 million jews found their death (USHMM).
During the Holocaust, the Germans deprived minority groups, especially the Jews, of human qualities, personalities, and spirits. The German Nazis treated the Jews like animals and forced them to endure abominable physical tortures. In the novel, Night, Elie Wiesel narrates his life during World War II as a Jew; he is compelled to be relocated to a concentration camp with his father, but unfortunately, he and his father are separated from his mother and sisters. Wiesel and his father face many situations where they are dehumanized along with the other fellow Jews. Through his perspective, the readers discover the cruel and disgusting practices taken against the Jews.
During a time in history, many people have suffered because of hatred and genocide. An example of this is when the African Americans were forced into slavery and killed when they did not work. The events in these acts were because of the silent majority . People were too afraid to speak their minds and stand up for themselves . This event was similar to slavery with the Native Americans when they were held against their will when the white men was taking over.
The Jews did have some different aspects that made their experience different from the disabled Germans. During their experience, the Jews were tattooed and their identities were lost. Also, the Jews faced selection processes when they arrived at camps. From the book Night, the author recalls his selection process: "He was holding a conductor 's baton and was surrounded by officers. The baton was moving
Hitler devised a long systematic plan that went on to wipe out 6 million European Jews, two-thirds of the Jewish population (Strahinich 7). Nations across the world saw this evil and banded together to fight against Germany and their Nazi party, with the goal to liberate the Holocaust prisoners and bring an end to Hitler’s cruel ways (Byers Overview 101). The Holocaust is a time in history when millions of people were persecuted in Europe by being sent to live in ghettos and eventually being deported to concentration camps where they were systematically annihilated until the Allied forces liberated the remaining survivors. Jews were not treated the same as other German citizins by the Nazi party. This act of hatred or maybe even racism was called Anti-Semitism.