The Holocaust:What It Was and How It Happened

TheHolocaust it was the genocide of some six million Jews in German-run concentration and extermination camps. This historic event was orchestrated by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime during World War II (1939-1945).

The anti-Semitic speeches (hate speeches against people of Jewish origin) guided the Third Reich, period in which Hitler was Head of State of Germany, leading to a government with eugenic practices.

In addition to Jews, blacks, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, political opponents and people with disabilities were also persecuted and killed.

What were the causes of the holocaust?

The main causes that led to the extermination of the Jews were:

• Rise of Hitler;
• Nazi ideology;
• Anti-Semitism.

The Rise of Hitler

In 1933, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, Adolf Hitler, was invited to the post of Chancellor of Germany. The Nazis, who were already winning political positions in the elections, gained more power to approve their government project.

The dictator developed a great oratorical ability so that he could attract more adherents to his practices.

Several laws were created to segregate and exterminate Jews. In 1935, Hitler signed the Nuremberg Laws that created an immediate segregation of the Jewish people. Among other determinations:

• prohibited Jews from being treated in hospitals;
• Jewish university students could no longer take doctoral exams;
• no Jew could be considered a German;
• They could not work in any government agency;

Nazi ideology

Nazi ideology used eugenics as a political practice. According to them, the Germans would be the only pure descendants of the Aryans (the primitive Indo-Europeans), so that Hitler believed his people to be a "master race".

Therefore, eugenics was a guiding practice of the Nazis. Eugenics is a set of practices and theories that seek to change the genetic characteristics of a population in a controlled manner. For this, for example, the Nazi government banned interracial marriage between Germans and Jews.

In his book “My Struggle ” (1925), written in prison, he refers to the Germans as the “best species of mankind”. This book was considered a doctrinal book on Nazi practices.

See also: Nazism

Anti-Semitism

Another striking feature of the Nazi government was anti-Semitism , prejudice against the ethnic group of Jews – the Semites. It was propagated by the III Reich through laws, decrees and regulations discriminatory against Jews throughout Germany.

Nazi anti-Semitism was also expressed in propaganda. To lead this role, Hitler appointed Joseph Goebbels as Minister of Propaganda. Through propagandist actions, conspiracy theories were created presenting the image that the Jews would be a treacherous people, with hidden plans to dominate the world.

It was also common advertisements where the Nazis linked Jews to communists and anarchists. Another common practice for the dissemination of these ideas was the speeches made by the Führer (leader, in German) to his population. The dictator developed a great oratorical ability to be able to attract more adherents to his practices.

See also:Anti-Semitism.

Concentration Camps and Extermination Camps:What did the Nazis do to the Jews?

Concentration camps were the spaces used by the Nazis to imprison people considered a threat to the Germans. The death camps were places where these same targets were taken to be killed.

As the Second World War unfolded and the defeats piled up, the persecution of Jews intensified. From 1942, at a conference held in Wansee , on the outskirts of Berlin, the Nazis adopted the “final solution”. A directive of scientific massacre was agreed, mainly of the Jews.

There already existed in Germany and other countries, concentration camps Nazis, where political enemies, Jews and the mentally ill were held and many of them killed.

The construction of extermination camps, where slaves, gypsies, religious pacifists and mainly Jews would be taken.

How did the holocaust work?

About eight million Jews lived in Europe. The largest community – 3 million people lived in Poland, followed by Romania (800,000) and Hungary (400,000).

That's why most of the death camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Sobibor, were built in Poland.

Prisoners from all over Europe, from regions invaded by the Germans, were deported to the death camps.

The deportees believed they would work for the Nazis. Some were employed as slave labor in German companies such as Bayer, BMW and Telefunken.

At the entrance to the camps, doctors separated the prisoners into two lines. Old people, sick people and children immediately went to their deaths in the gas chambers, where the signs indicated “showers” ​​or “disinfection”.

The bodies were sent to crematory ovens. The doctor Josef Mengele, died in 1986 in Brazil, where he lived in hiding for many years.

At the height of its activities, Auschwitz exterminated six thousand people a day in the gas chambers or even by starvation.

Treblinka in Poland, Dachau and Buchenwald in Germany, are some of the countless concentration camps that recall the horror of the Nazi regime.

Hundreds of prisoners were used in terrible “experiments” with new drugs by the Bayer laboratory. They paid 170 marks per head and after the tests the test subjects were exterminated.

All valuables, gold teeth, glasses and suitcases were removed from the victims. When the war ended, it was discovered that some six million Jews , three hundred thousand gypsies, crowds of Soviet prisoners, communists, socialists and religious pacifists had been massacred.

The End of the Holocaust

With the military offensives in Germany by the allied troops, thousands of prisoners were found in concentration camps.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet forces were the first to arrive at Auschwitz, the largest of all.

The prisoners who resisted the massacre were released. British forces freed 60,000 prisoners in Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen, Germany.

US forces freed more than 20,000 prisoners in Buchenwald, also in Germany. The Najdanek camp in Poland had been set on fire to hide evidence of the extermination.

It was only after the prisoners were released that the world became aware of Nazi atrocities. January 27th is "International Holocaust Remembrance Day".

Discover the story of Anne Frank, one of the victims of the Holocaust.

Bibliographic References

Neves, Priscilla Piccolo. The Jewish Holocaust. São Luís, 2018.