Zack Rocco

Mr. Palcsey

April 26, 2018

Honors English 10

Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany

The word holocaust was not intended to have a negative connotation. Its initial meaning

was from Greek origin, “holos” meaning whole, and “kaustos” meaning burned. Holocaust was

used for faith to describe a sacrificial offering, akin to the Catholic faith. The 1930’s Germany

Nazi Party put a whole new meaning on the word. When the word is referenced now, it is

interpreted as the killing of millions of people, particularly Jews. The Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler,

was not responsible for the start of anti-Semitism. The disdain those of Jewish descent could date

back to the 1800s. In fact, during the 1870s, the Jewish people were forced to leave Palestine

against their will. Additionally, Europe was restricting the rights of Jews. However, Adolf Hitler

took anti-Semitism to a whole new level. The Nazi party of Germany, led by Hitler, forcefully

took the rights of Jews as well as created laws enforcing that Jews had no rights. The Jewish

people were considered to be subhuman. Hitler and the Nazi’s were brutal and cruel towards the

Jewish community.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he had a goal of racial purity. Hitler was sort

of recruited to lead the anti-Semitic party. Hitler was elected to be the Chancellor of Germany in

1933. He ran for the president election but lost. After the president’s death, Hitler made himself

the supreme ruler of Germany, thus affording him Absolute Power. This, after all, was his main

objective. Hitler orated many, many speeches on his views and made many appealing promises

to the Germans that sounded favorable to Germany’s citizens. Hitler and the Nazi’s started to
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make a dominant race, exterminating anyone they thought were not worthy. (Meaker 34-35).

Hitler and many of the German citizens whom hated the Jewish people blamed the Jews for

Germany’s loss in WWI. Five years after Germanys loss in WWI, he was put in prison for

attempting to do a coup of the Government. While in prison, he authored a book called Mein

Kampf. The book mainly dealt with Hitler’s many struggles. He predicted that there would be a

war and all the Jews would be exterminated in Germany.

Adolf Hitler was not the only leader that vehemently hated the Jews and wanted them to

suffer. Another historic name that helped run the genocide was Heinrich Himmler. In 1921,

Adolf Hitler named Heinrich Himmler the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel). Himmler took

advantage of his power and when the Nazi’s came to power in 1933, he created an elite corps. At

the beginning of the rein of Nazi Germany, Himmler grew the SS up to 52,000 people. As the

years went on, Himmler was getting promotions rapidly. There was a sinister method derived by

these evil people called “The Final Solution”. Many might think that Hitler was the brainchild of

this evil mantra. However, the main person behind this was Heinrich Himmler. In 1942, The

Final Solution was put into place because the genocide was moving too slow for their liking.

Even though they have already managed to kill over a million Jews, the final solution involved

extermination camps and plans to carry out the Jewish genocide. The plan was to completely

exterminate the European Jews. (Meaker 39). Himmler had created concentration camps and

planned for the murder of every Jew in the nation.

The Jews were brutally tortured and killed in a systematic way. The Jews in Germany

were not allowed to leave the country. If they were found trying to escape, they would be

executed immediately. They barely gave the Jews food and the living conditions they lived in

were terrible. Due to those conditions, many Jews died of starvation and fatal diseases. The
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Jewish people were given no rights as they could not marry anyone that was not of the Jewish

faith. The Nazi’s implemented laws called the Nuremburg Laws. Nuremberg Laws are racial

laws that were implemented by Germans. This was the basis for the anti-Jewish campaign. They

were implemented in 1935. There were 13 additional decrees added over the span of 8 years.

(Skehan 6). They had to live in ghettos. In the book, Hitler’s War and the Horrific Account of the

Holocaust, Meaker states, “In 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, it was easier for the

Germans to imprison Jews in ghetto. The Nazis simply rounded them up and sent them to

crowded ghettos.” (40). Life in the ghettos was basically unlivable. Many families would have to

share one apartment, usually without plumbing. Garbage and human waste was just thrown into

the streets. These very unsanitary places caused many diseases to spread rapidly. Jews were

constantly trying to smuggle food for them and their family, but they were usually caught and

executed. The Jews were ordered to wear identifying armbands or badges. The daily life in

Ghettos were administrated by a Jewish council that was appointed by the Nazi’s. They had a

ghetto police force to enforce the crime even if it was so little. The Germans were not hesitant on

killing the jewish police men who did not fulfil their duties. (Skehan 21). Thousands and

thousands of people died in the ghettos. Some died of disease, some died of starvation, and some

just simply killed themselves to end the horror. The Germans stored the Jews in the ghettos until

they could transport them to the camps they had established for labor and execution. For the

“final solution” they had to create camps where they could put the Jews to work, and some were

for execution.

The leaders of the Nazi party, mainly Hitler and Heinrich, created concentration camps.

Before they could start acting upon the final solution, they had to think of ways in which they

were going to exterminate all the people they did not want, specifically the Jews. The goal was to
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efficiently execute this plan so to take the least time as possible. (Meaker 35). “One solution was

the implementation of mobile killing units. These were vans rigged so that the exhaust pipes

could be diverted into the sealed back enclosures. According to Walter Burmeister, who drove a

gassing van, this is how these vans worked. People were picked up and taken to a central

location. They were told that they needed to be disinfected. They were asked to turn in their

valuables for safekeeping and their clothing for disinfecting while they were being bathed.”

(Meaker 36). They then started the engine, and the people started to die off. They drove them to

a wooded area and dumped the bodies. They did not like the efficiency of that idea, so they had

to think of another way to get rid of them quickly. Dachau opened in March 1933. The initial

purpose of camps like this were completely different than originally thought to be. It was an old

factory with the initial purpose of holding prisoners. Himmler, who was the Munich chief of

police, said it could probably hold around 5,000 people. This camp would also be used for a

training camp for the SS guards. Dachau was the first and longest lasting camp. (Meaker 43-46).

After the first and arguably the least brutal camp was constructed, this was quickly followed by

the biggest death camp, Auschwitz. Auschwitz was the biggest, most brutal camps constructed

by the Nazis. Auschwitz was not just one camp, rather a network of branches from the main

camp. There was a base camp knows as Auschwitz I. There was an extermination camp known

as Auschwitz II, or Auschwitz-Birkenau. Then there was Auschwitz III, or Buna-Monowitz,

which they used as a labor camp. Off of these camps, there were also 45 satellite camps. Around

3 million innocent people died in this camp alone. Studies have shown that 2 and a half million.

People were gassed and half a million were starved. Not only were they worked to death, or

gassed to death, there was also medical experiments going on inside the camps. Meaker says in

his book, Hitler’s War and the Horrific Account of the Holocaust, “One of the projects at
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Auschwitz-Birkenau was the medical experimentation. This was not the only location for the

experiments but the most famous Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele was at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He

was often part of the welcoming committee, getting a first look at the newly arrived prisoners.

He was particularly looking for twins, but he had a number of interests and was free to find any

subjects he wanted.” (53). There were very minimal survivors of this horrible genocide.

Auschwitz was liberated by the soviets and the United States. They found only 7,650 prisoners

alive, but in very bad shape.

Hitler was ultimately responsible for the death of 29 million during the span of WWII.

The very few survivors there were, are very lucky they were saved in time. Skehan writes about

a survivor named Eva Braun, “While I was elated by the freedom, there was tremendous fear.

Who would I find? We had survived this, but we now have to go back to civilization. How would

we react in a normal world again? We were two young girls without anything. Who will take

care of us? What will we do? It was euphoria but is was a very ambivalent feeling. We were

frightened.” (41). The survivors feared to go back their homes. In Poland after the war, there

were many anti-Jew riots. In 1946, there was a riot so big that they ended up killing at least 40

Jews, and many were left severely injured. The Jews who returned home, were scared for their

lives. For the people who did not want to return home, had very few emigration options. Many

ended up going to other parts of Europe. There were organizations created to help disabled and

tortured Jews. They would provide them with food, shelter, and take care of them. Israel was

established in May of 1948. There could have been up to a 100,000 Jews who emigrated there.

The Nazi party started by Adolf Hitler had an extreme hatred toward the Jewish people

and anyone who they though would ruin their “master race”. The Nazis did not consider Jewish

to be a faith, but rather to be a race. The Jewish “race” was unacceptable to them and thought of
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as a menace to society. Hitler’s overall goal was to create a society that is so powerful that they

could rule the world for thousands of years. To do that he needed to get rid of anyone who stood

in the way of that, so he got rid of the mentally disabled, the physically disabled, the Jews, and

the lazy people. The “Final Solution” gave them a way of fast execution to bring them rapid

results. Before Hitler’s crazy solution could be stopped by other countries, he succeeded to

killing about 29 million people during his reign. The holocaust goes down in history as one of

the worst, if not the worst, tragedy our world has ever seen.
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Works Cited

Blogger, Guest. “America’s First Victory Against the German Army Was 97 Years Ago Today.”

WAR HISTORY ONLINE, 28 Sept. 2016, www.warhistoryonline.com/america-victory

Concentration Camps, 1933-1939. “United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”, United States

Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?Moduleld=10005263

History.com Staff. “The Holocaust.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009,

www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-holocaust#

Meaker, Scott. Hitler’s War and the Horrific Account of the Holocaust, Scott Meaker. 2013.

Obermeier, Abbie, and Kayla Stenger. The Holocaust.

History, Hourly. Adolf Hitler: A Life From Beginning to End, 2016.

Skehan, Luke. The Holocaust. Luke Skehan, 2013.