essay on holocaust in 500 words
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Answer:
The Holocaust is undoubtedly the most horrific even to take place in history. It is also one of the most important events in recent history. Although it was a horrific event, it was and still is a valuable tool, to be used in teaching us to avoid hate. We need to understand what pushed people to hate as much as Nazis did so we can hope to prevent similar happenings. This essay will be directed to show why the Holocaust is an important thing to study and how we can hope to prevent this hate.
The world is not yet beyond the Holocaust take Germany for example, the country is just barely coming to terms with the horrific events that some of their countrymen inflicted on others. Should it really take 50 years for a country to realize the magnitude of the torture that was inflicted by the Nazis? I think not, it starts getting scary when you hear of people denying the Holocaust; arguing its very existence. For a person to be able to ignore all the evidence showing that the Holocaust did in fact exist, to ignore all the testimonies from individuals that experienced the horrors of the Holocaust; should be a warning to us all. Until the world in its entirety comes to grips with the Holocaust, acts of genocide will continue to happen.
The Holocaust was perhaps the most hateful event to occur in history. While this hate was an awful thing, it can be used as a valuable tool in the hands of our teachers. Teachers are perhaps the only way that the horrors of the Holocaust can be conveyed, to America’s youth, and furthermore the only way events like it can be prevented in the future. By learning about the Holocaust students get a first hand look at the travesties that the Holocaust brought, while learning about the horrors, one learns to build a sense of morality. When students are able to understand the magnitude of the suffering, they will build up strong morals to fight against a similar event happening in the future.
Answer:
Holocaust, also known as the Shoah,[c] was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.[a][d] The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through work in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.[4]
The Holocaust
Part of World War II
Selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944 (Auschwitz Album) 1a.jpg
From the Auschwitz Album: Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz II in German-occupied Poland, May 1944. Most were "selected" to go to the gas chambers. Camp prisoners are visible in their striped uniforms.[1]
Location
Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe
Description
Genocide of the European Jews
Date
1941–1945[2]
Attack type
Genocide, ethnic cleansing
Deaths
Around 6 million Jews[a]
Other victims of Nazi persecution during the Holocaust era: 11 million[b]
Perpetrators
Nazi Germany and its collaborators
List of major perpetrators of the Holocaust
Motive
Antisemitism, racism
Trials
Nuremberg trials, Subsequent Nuremberg trials, Trial of Adolf Eichmann, and others
Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933.[5] After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March,[6] which gave Hitler plenary powers, the government began isolating Jews from civil society; this included boycotting Jewish businesses in April 1933 and enacting the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935. On 9–10 November 1938, eight months after Germany annexed Austria, Jewish businesses and other buildings were ransacked or set on fire throughout Germany and Austria during what became known as Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"). After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, the regime set up ghettos to segregate Jews. Eventually thousands of camps and other detention sites were established across German-occupied Europe.
The segregation of Jews in ghettos culminated in the policy of extermination the Nazis called the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", discussed by senior Nazi officials at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942. As German forces captured territories in the East, all anti-Jewish measures were radicalized. Under the coordination of the SS, with directions from the highest leadership of the Nazi Party, killings were committed within Germany itself, throughout occupied Europe, and within territories controlled by Germany's allies. Paramilitary death squads called Einsatzgruppen, in cooperation with the German Army and local collaborators, murdered around 1.3 million Jews in mass shootings and pogroms between 1941 and 1945. By mid-1942, victims were being deported from ghettos across Europe in sealed freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, they were gassed, worked or beaten to death, or killed by disease or during death marches. The killing continued until the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945.
The European Jews were targeted for extermination as part of a larger event during the Holocaust era (1933–1945),[7][8] in which Germany and its collaborators persecuted and murdered other groups, including ethnic Poles, Soviet civilians and prisoners of war, sqq Roma, the handicapped, political and religious dissidents, and gay men.[e] The death toll of these other groups is thought to be over 11 million.[b]