...Nazi Death Camps Nazi Death Camps Arbeit Macht Frei Arbeit Macht Frei 2012 Joseph Frimpong Western Civilization 2 11/2/2012 2012 Joseph Frimpong Western Civilization 2 11/2/2012 Arbeit macht frei; when translated into English means labor makes you free. This was the first thing many Jews in the 1940’s saw as the banner above the gates of the place they’d likely die read. (Wachsmann) German soldiers fed Jews false hope, thinking that the harder they worked the closer freedom would be when in reality freedom could only come with death. The world changed forever when an estimated 20,946,000 people died due to the world war ignited by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. The Third Reich was the name for Nazi Germany under Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) when it was a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is a political system where the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever necessary. (Dictionary) Soldiers were killed in battle, Civilians in cross fire, and by starvation but nothing compares to the systematic execution and elimination demonstrated by the Third Reich sponsored death camps. Before the organized concentration camps that are well known throughout the world to have killed a countless number of people there were camps built in the early 1930’s when the Nazi’s first came into power. Earlier camps were temporary and were set up to confine, interrogate, torture, and weaken...
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...terrible tragedy. This tragedy, known as “The Holocaust”, targeted a variety of people. The Nazis persecuted anyone who dared to oppose them as well as the disabled, African Americans, Gypsies, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses; they reserved their strong hatred for the Jews. Many people cannot grasp how such a tragic phenomenon, like “The Holocaust”, could occur. In order for one to truly understand the Holocaust, one must understand how Hitler rose to power and killed so many people in such little time. Within a year and a half, Hitler and the Nazis Party had taken absolute power of Germany. It became possible to arrest opponents of the regime and lock them up with no charge filed, no warrant and no real evidence. The first concentration camp Dachau was opened in March 1933 to hold all the prisoners (Wood 42). In August 1933 Hitler declared himself both president and chancellor of the Third Reich and commander-in-chief of the military (Nelson, English.illinois.edu). Hitler now had totalitarian dictatorial power. In 1935 German Congress passes the Nuremburg Laws which redefine German Jews as non-citizens and ban Jews from any political participation. These laws prohibited Jews from marrying German citizens, having extramarital relations with German citizens and prohibited any Jew from raising the German flag (Unknown,...
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...In August 1942, Wiesenthal’s mother was sent to the Belzec death camp. By September, most of his and his wife’s relative were dead; a total of eighty-nine members of both families perished. With the help of the deputy director, Wiesenthal himself escaped the Ostbahn camp in October 1943, just before the Germans began liquidating all the inmates. In June 1944, he was recaptured and was sent back to the camp going by the name of Janowska where he would have been certainly killed if it wasn’t for the German eastern front collapsing under the Red Army which was apparently advancing and taking over German territory. Since his wife had blonde hair, it gave her a possibility of going as an "Aryan," Wiesenthal made an arrangement with the Polish underground. As an end-result definite graphs of railroad intersection focuses made by him for use by saboteurs, his wife was given false papers recognizing her as "Irene Kowalska," a Pole, and was able to get out of the camp in the autumn of 1942. She lived in Warsaw for a long time and afterward worked in the Rhineland as a forced labourer, without her true identity ever being discovered....
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...horrifying nightmares later called Concentration Camps. Throughout the years the concentration camps were spreading like wildfire across the country collecting as many Jews as they could and found different ways to torture and slaughter the victims. Each concentration camp had its different way of making the lives of the Jews miserable and unbearable. For example Auschwitz, known for their barbaric gas chambers that would kill 700-800 people at a time with the poison called hydrogen cyanide. Early on, the SS-Einsatzgruppen (death squads) did murder thousands of Jews, Slaves and general non-Germans through gunfire, burning, and hanging but was later deemed this was too inefficient. Later on they started to keep the prisoners in better condition so they could work harder to build more camps, better test results and in some cases they even kept certain Jews in better condition than the others to trade prisoned Nazi’s. But most of the...
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...National Socialist German Worker's Party, planned to murder the Jewish people. They called this plot, “the final solution.” The Holocaust was a devastating time during World War Two,that changed the lives of many people all over the world. The name holocaust comes from the Greek word “holokauston”, meaning sacrifice from fire. The holocaust killed many groups of people such as the Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the disabled for persecution, but mostly the Jews. When Hitler first gained power, he formed an advanced police and military force to smother anyone who criticized his authority. With this force, Hitler developed the first concentration camp, Dachau. A concentration camp was used to work and starve prisoners to death. Later Dachau became a huge concentration camp to exterminate Jews. Hitler made life miserable for Jews. On April of 1933, the Nazis initiated by boycotting all Jewish ran businesses. The Nuremberg Laws issued in September of 1935, made it so Jews were excluded from most public life. The law included exposing the German Jews of their citizenship, and outlawed marriages and extramarital sex between Jews and Germans. This law was the start of all legal standards for additional anti-Jewish legislation. After the Nuremberg Laws, many new laws against Jews were created. These laws kept Jews away from parks, fired them from civil service jobs, forced Jews to register their property, and prohibited Jewish doctors...
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...Judaism Kory A. Lavine REL134 Monday March 9, 2015 Johnny Boudreaux Judaism Judaism considered one, if not the oldest religion in the world. A religion steeped in historical events, notable people, symbolism, with approximately 14.5M practitioners to date. Though not well known, Albert Einstein is one of the more famous, present day Jewish professionals. Born in Germany, He was the eldest of two children born to Hermann and Pauline Einstein. Mostly known for his “Theory of Relativity”, which challenged all ideas of space and time once set by Sir Isaac Newton, Albert took an early interest in science. At age five, when he was intrigued by a compass’s invisible forces, and again at age twelve, when he found a book on geometry. At sixteen, he wrote his first scientific paper titled: “The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields.". In which he questioned “If the light were a wave, then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. In reality, the light beam is moving.” This paradox would dominate his thinking for the next ten years. In 1905, while working in a patent office, Einstein submitted a paper for his doctorate and had four other papers published. It was four articles that would present grant Einstein his academic recognition, and where the famous “E=mc2” equation first appeared. The physics community initially dispelled Einstein until the founder of quantum theory Max Planck, garnered his attention. Einstein’s success continued to...
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..."Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames, which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments, which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never" (Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor). The Holocaust. Just thinking about...
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...these places because he argued that no place where “so much blood of heroic Germans hath spilled” should be made available as a residence for the worst enemies of the Germans. Madagascar became the most seriously discussed location for a Jewish relocation. Madagascar was perfect because it was a remote location that had unfavorable conditions so it would hasten deaths. This plan was approved by Hitler in 1938 and was carried out until the mass murder began in 1941(Facts about the holocaust). This first step was an important psychological step on the path to the mass murders of the Holocaust. Concentration camps were where the Nazis kept Jews, political prisoners, criminals, homosexuals, gypsies, and the mentally disabled. These camps were founded at first as a place of incarceration (HISTORY). The death rate at the camps was very high, 50 percent, when they were only designed as incarceration centers. After 1939 the camps became places where the prisoners were either killed or made as slave laborers (TIMELINE). The prisoners were also undernourished and often tortured. It is estimated that the Nazis had fifteen thousand camps and...
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...people and sent them to concentration camps in various locations, such as Auschwitz in Poland. Death was a common occurrence in these concentration camps. The Holocaust was a horrible time for the Jewish people who were forcefully segregated from the rest and heavily persecuted, and having knowledge of this period of time will help today’s world recognize signs of this happening again. The end of World War I was a big reason...
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...can be difficult to determine where to start. This reading list is collected from recommendations from other members of The Holocaust History Project. It is not a complete bibliography but represents our opinion as to what are the most useful starting places for research. Since this list concentrates on works that are easily available and useful to a person unacquainted with the history of the Holocaust, many excellent books which are rare or out of print are not listed. Another class of books that are not included is works that are controversial because of their contents or the unusual theories they propose. Some of these are excellent works, others are not. But we feel that the reader for whom this list was compiled would not have the knowledge needed to evaluate these discussions of the legitimate controversies about the Holocaust. Just as a medical student must learn anatomy before he or she is taught surgery, someone studying the Holocaust must know the factual background before some of the more technical studies can be understood. As well as general works we have included books of specialized interest concerning the matters about which we at The Holocaust History Project are most frequently asked. Many of these books deal with more than one subject, but in the interest of brevity we have not cited a book more than once. General history of the Holocaust The Holocaust was not just an event. It was a process that continued for over a decade and involved millions of people...
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...Account for the Progressive Radicalization of the Nazi Regime. The power structure of the Nazi regime lacked a legitimate and stable democratic order, being ruled over by a charismatic figure, Hitler, who offered through his propaganda a new and better future for the people. In 1919 Hitler joined the German Workers Party, an extreme right wing national party that played on the Germans hatred of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1920 the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and Hyperinflation in 1923 with the Weimer Government ruined the middle class and furthered the dissatisfaction of the German people with the current Government. This presented the NSDAP an opportunity to present a policy that would benefit Germany. The regime offered opportunities to the population with security across the community and a direction of supremacy for their race. Policies of the Nazis did not include involving the broader population in the more brutal and violent parts of their rule, thus the people’s communities were forged through genocide. Hitler was obsessed with having a pure racial community in Germany and an extension of land for Germany eventuating in world domination and he pursued these objectives with ruthlessness and inhuman brutality. Progressive radicalization was inevitable due to the chaotic anti-Semitism beliefs and competitive nature of an elite ruler and a few devout followers. The propaganda campaigns are what paved the way to anti-Semitism...
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...Connell Evans 5th Hour 29April2013 Auschwitz; the World’s Largest Death Center “Before describing daily life in the concentration camps, it is necessary to take a broader look at the entire Nazi camp system. In all, there were more than nine thousand concentration camps: transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, slave-labor camps, camps for “work-education,” camps for political prisoners, camps for police detention, camps for children whose parents were inmates of labor camps, and camps for killing. Six of these camps were primarily killing centers: Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka, Majdenek, and Auschwitz. Auschwitz is the largest death center the world has ever seen” (Soumerai 171). Auschwitz was a terrible concentration camp because many people died and many people are still haunted by the memories. The concentration camp known as Auschwitz was established on May 20, 1940. Auschwitz was divided into three camps: Auschwitz 1, for resistance fighters; Buna, which was for slave laborers; and Birkenau, which housed the crematoria, medical laboratories, gas chambers, and barracks for the waiting victims (Soumerai 171). Built on approximately eighteen square miles of land that is located in Poland, the camp was “owned” by the Reich SS. In all, Auschwitz comprised three large camps. It was guarded by 6,000 men in twelve companies of SS Death’s Head Units (Soumerai 174). Auschwitz 1, a concentration camp for political prisoners and non-Jews, contained two- and three-story...
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...Shannon Trubatch Imaginary Worlds Assignment 2 ENG201 Behind the Lens: Photographs of the Holocaust Religion has been found to be, time and time again, a factor that influences the actions taken by many, both kind and cruel, across the globe and throughout history. My mother is a Christian, and I grew up in a household celebrating Christian holidays and attending church on Sundays. My father, however, was raised in Long Island in a Jewish home, where he celebrated Hanukah, had a bar mitzvah, and went to temple. As I grew up, I would learn of the history of the world, but nothing would strike me more than the events of the Holocaust. As I continued to learn and grow older, I would begin to understand the atrocities that took place during this time, half a world a way, and the images and films that I saw in regards to the Holocaust would haunt me most of all. A photo essay, compiled by the English department at the University of Illinois, contains a number of photographs from the Holocaust that demonstrates the atrocities that occurred during this time. These photographs support the argument developed by Susan Sontag that photographers must make the decision between a photograph and a life, and that the viewers of these images also have a responsibility to actions of atrocity and human suffering. In Susan Sontag’s book On Photography, she develops the argument that photography is an act of nonintervention; that the photographer is faced with the choice between capturing...
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...9.1 Anti Semitism — * def: Hostility/Hatred towards the Jewish people * Now a new feeling: Jewish Communities have face judgement and violence all throughout history. * From time to time, Jewish population has experienced deliberate attacks (pogroms) yet have managed to survive as a group and as a religion. * Nazi policy towards the Jews was the most brutal and horrific example of anti-Semitic behaviour in history * Nazis developed a deliberate policy to kill the Hews who lived in Germany — In 1922, 60% of the worl’d’s population of Jews occupied land in German and its area. By 1945, 2/3 of the Jewish population had been killed * By the 19th Century: German-Jews had won greater acceptance in that they made very important contributions to the intellectual, financial, educational and cultural life of the nation. * During WW1, 100 000 Jewish soldiers died during the conflict. * In the Weimar Republic, Jews enjoyed equal rights with all other Germans and some even rose to high positions in the civil service and the government. * Late 19th Century: Jews represented a challenge to the concept of the nationalism, especially when there was a development of the Volkisch movement. * Bt the start of the 20th Century, ideology of the racially pure was being embraced by all, and the Jews were not part of it. * German Historian Heinrich von Treitschke in the 1880’s said that ‘The Jews are our misfortune’ — A quote which...
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...AP EH CH. 27---THE DEEPENING OF THE EUROPEAN CRISIS: WW II I. PRELUDE TO WAR (1933-1939) ---the efforts at collective security in the 1920s---the League of Nations, the attempts at disarmament, the pacts and the treaties---all proved meaningless in view of the growth of Nazi Germany and its deliberate scrapping of the postwar settlement in the 1930s ---World War II was largely made possible by the failure of Britain and France to oppose strongly flagrant German violations of the Treaty of Versailles A. The Role of Hitler 1. WW II in Europe had its beginnings in the ideas of Adolf Hitler, who believed that only Aryans were capable of building a great civilization 2. Hitler was a firm believer in the doctrine of Lebensraum which stated that a nation’s power depended on the amount and kind of land it occupied 3. Hitler thought that the Russian Revolution created conditions for Germany’s acquisition of land to its “racially inferior Slavic” east (Mein Kampf spelled out Hitler’s desire to expand eastward and to prepare for the inevitable war with the “Bolshevik Jew-led” Soviet Union) 4. Hitler always returned to his basic ideological plans for racial supremacy and empire as keys to the blueprint for achieving his goals 5. Hitler’s desire to create an Aryan empire led to slave labor and even mass extermination on a scale that would have been incomprehensible to previous generations of Germans (or anybody else outside...
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