Genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. “The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945, is history’s most extreme example of anti-Semitism. Between 1933 and 1945 more than six million Jews were killed by the Nazis”(Holocaust Encyclopedia). It was sponsored and controlled by the infamous Adolf Hitler. He believed that the Jews were responsible for what happened to them during World War I. Hitler said that the Nazis and all other Germans were superior to the Jews and they needed to show it. Hitler gave powerful speeches that motivated people and persuaded them to think that the only way to solve their economic problems was to exterminate the whole Jewish population. His first step was grouping the people together so it would be easier to transport them to the concentration camps. The Nazis first put them in ghettos, where they were eventually put on trains to be taken to the death or labor camps. Hitler’s second step to his plan was to establish camps to imprison the millions of people and put them to work. Around 1933 and 1945, approximately 20,000 camps were made, making it easier to kill them. “These camps were used for a range of purposes including forced-labor camps, transit camps which were served as temporary way stations, and extermination camps built primarily or exclusively for mass murder” (Holocaust Encyclopedia).
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| Bilderdienst, Sueddeutscher Verlag. Members of a Jewish family walking along a Berlin street wear the compulsory Star of David. Berlin, Germany. 27 Sept. 1941. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2011. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?MediaId=2011>. |
Jews are forced into boxcars destined for the Belzec extermination camp. Lublin,
Poland, 1942. 1942. United States Holocauat Memorial Museum. N.p., n.d.
Web. 19 Apr. 2011. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/
media_ph.php?MediaId=1456>.