The Benefits Of The Holocaust For The

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The Benefits Of The Holocaust For The Jews Essay, Research Paper The Benefits of the Holocaust for the Jews The Holocaust and the murder of approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi Germany during World War II was and is till now one of the few genocide attempts, which were precisely organized and planned for total annihilation of the Jews. Many other plans such as this one were attempted before, taking as an example by Alexander the Great, but first: the idea never occurred to Alexander?s mind. Why? Because ?the technology of his time did not make such a thought conceivable? (Cargas, 132). So, ethnic violence has not been uncommon in world history, but the Holocaust stands out as the only systematic effort by a modern government to destroy an entire people. Not only Jews were

killed by the Nazis but also Slavs, Gypsies, Polish intelligentsia, resistance fighters from all the nations, German opponents of Nazism, homosexuals, Habitual criminals, and the ?anti-social? such as beggars, vagrants, and hawkers. Every Jewish community in occupied Europe suffered losses during the Holocaust solely because of the fanatic Nazi belief that they were the carriers of a genetic inheritance that threatened German and Christian values. But how was Adolf Hitler able to convince the German population of his fanatic ideas, how did all this started, and who is responsible for the Holocaust? Hostility between Christians and Jews is ancient, but ?the anti-Semitic bias was [increasing] everywhere in Germany before and especially after the First World War?(Cargas, 16). In the

late 19th century many Germans came to see the Jew as the symbol of all they feared: the big city, international finance, secularism, big business, liberalism, and the erosion of traditional ways of life. German nationalism, which was conservative and ethnic, intensified the hostility toward Jews, who were not thought to be part of the German ?Volk?. After World War I, when Germany faced political and economic crisis including the raging inflation and the great depression of the 1930s, the Nazi party became the leading German anti-Semitic movement. ?Lucy S. Dawidowicz, in her 1975 definitive book, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, states that in the years of 1907 to 1910 [ ], anti-Semitic organizations proliferated, anti-Semitic writing and propaganda poured forth in an

unending stream? (Cargas, 16). By the outbreak of World War II, Jews were being excluded from public life, forced to surrender their property, and also boycotted, beaten, imprisoned, and sometimes killed. The idea of the ?Final Solution? (Endloesung) began as the German armies moved to the East. While thousands of Jews were murdered by the Nazis or died as a direct result of discriminatory measures instituted against Jews during the years of the ?Third Reich?, the systematic murder of Jews did not begin until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The term ?Final Solution? refers to Germany?s plan to murder all the Jews of Europe. Special units began the mass shootings that killed two million Jews, others were driven into ghettos in Polish cities and kept there

waiting for their transportation to death camps . Other Jews were killed immediately in gas chambers, their bodies were cremated after their gold teeth, hair, and clothes were taken off. It all began with Hitler?s appearance on the scene. Drastic steps against the Jews were taken within a matter of days after he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. ?But the development and execution of the ?Final Solution? under Adolf Eichmann and his fellow executioners came many years later. Consequently, the nagging question remains and recurs: could not the other nations of the earth have done much more than they did to prevent the murder of 6 million Jews?? (Cargas, 18). First of all there is the question of how much knowledge the outside world was permitted to obtain. Once the war began,