Hitler’s hatred of the Jews caused much suffering, death, and one of the worst mass killings in history. This time in which nearly six million Jews were killed became known as the Holocaust. Hitler and his followers, who were called Nazis, were the leaders of this ultimate genocide of the Jews. Hitler was a very evil man. His hatred of the Jews was so harsh that it ultimately led to the mass killing of the Jews. Anti-Semitism was Hitler’s key background for his hatred of the Jews. Anti-Semitism is defined by Webster as “the discrimination or harsh prosecution of the Jews.” Hitler believed that the world was a struggle between the superior race and the inferior races. The superior race supposedly included people that had blond hair, blue eyes, and were strong. Hitler called this race the “Aryans”. The inferior race included all people that did not have the characteristics of the “Aryans.” Among these were the Jews, Jehovah’s witnesses, and Gypsies, which the Germans called “the undesirables”. Hitler strongly believed that the “Aryan” race should win this battle between the races. He wrote all of his thoughts about the hatred of the Jews in a book, which he entitled Mein Kampf. This is why the Holocaust began.
To begin his ultimate genocide of the Jews, Hitler decided to “resettle” the Jews. This began in 1941. The first place that was to be “cleansed” of Jews was what was the General Government, also called Poland. To separate them from society, he moved them into tightly cramped ghettos and slums. The living conditions were so bad that this alone killed many of the Jews. After the Jews were inside the Ghettos, Hitler’s advisors and leaders of the Nazis picked out the healthy Jews and sent them to what we now know as Concentration Camps. The Concentration Camps were places where Jews were sent to work long, hard hours with little or no pay to provide for the Nazis. In these Concentration Camps, living conditions were very bad. There was little food or water. This is how Hitler began his resettlement of the Jews.
Soon after Hitler began resettling the Jews into Ghettos and slums, he came up with a way to quickly kill many Jews. This was known as the “Final Solution.” His idea was to build many “Death Camps,” which were ultimate killing centers for Jews, throughout Europe. There were six of these camps. They were Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. These death camps had one and only one purpose: To kill the Jews. In these death camps, millions of Jews were killed. To kill as many Jews as he wanted, Hitler had to come up with yet another plan. His first idea was to use mass shootings to kill the Jews. There were groups of men that followed after the German army to kill any Jews that were left in the towns that the army went through. These groups were called the “Einsatzgruppen.” He did not like this technique very much though because it required too much manpower and did not kill enough Jews fast enough. He then came up with another plan in which gas would be used to kill the Jews. He called this plan in which people were killed with gas “Euthanasia”. He decided to use this plan because it would kill large numbers of Jews at one time and quickly. They first used carbon monoxide gas from the exhaust of trucks to kill the Jews. Soon after they began, they discovered Cyanide gas, which was known by the Germans as Zyklon B. This gas killed very quickly, so they could get more Jews in and out of the killing rooms quicker. To get the Jews to the killing rooms, they told them that they were taking them to get a hot shower. Once the Jews were in the “shower room,” the door was sealed and the gas was turned on. This was a truly ingenious yet sick way of killing.
You may ask, “Why didn’t the Jews resist?” There are many reasons for this. The first is that weapons were not readily available for the Jews to use. They were a religious people so they did not have weapons. The second reason that the Jews did not resist is because when they did resist, they faced “collective punishment,” which is the killing of many Jews for the actions of a few. There were a few uprisings, though, in the death camps of Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz. These were the main reasons that there was no resistance. You may also ask, “Why didn’t the Jews leave Europe?” The answer to this is that the Jews could not leave Europe because most of them did not have the money, stamina, or the chance to leave the country. This was truly a horrible time of killing and death. Although nearly six million Jews were killed, this opened many people’s eyes to what can happen with prosecution. The Holocaust will undoubtedly live in the hearts of many people for generations to camp.
