The German Holocaust

By Keasa Davies

Germany Post-WWI

When Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany in 1933; he almost immediately began enforcing anti-Semitic laws to eliminate Jewish rights. Along with this, he began "Lebensraum" which was intended to gain more territory and living space for Germany. Post WWI Germany was an economic disaster. When the Treaty Of Versailles left Germany to blame for WWI  and held Germany responsible for all loss and damage that occurred in the war, Germany had produced so much money in order to pay off the treaty, the money left in circulation was worth less than the paper it was printed on. 

 Adolf came to power by using his charismatic personality to appeal to the people. Hitler promised the people what they wanted, which caused the people of Germany to believe in him, thus giving him more power. At the time, the way Germany was laid out was very culture based. This resulted in boycotting in certain communities due to racism or cultural indifferences. Obviously this resulted in more financial instability across the nation. Hitler’s promise of financial stability was delivered. By creating the work camps he created jobs, housing, and a steady food supply for the nation, Hitler brought Germany out of the rut it had been living in for so long. This is what the people wanted. In reality Hitler was taking what he gave to the people from the people by redistributing the wealth, which shows the communist personality of Hitler. Nonetheless at the time this did not matter as Hitler was gaining the power he desired, and the citizens of Germany were no longer starving and economically broken.

 Not only did Adolf deliver on his promise to end the hyper-inflation of the German market, Hitler further delivered his promise by giving citizens the differentiation that the individuals wanted. Using the Star of David, Hitler identified the Jewish people of Germany as an individual nation within a nation. Once again this is what the people wanted. The Jewish people, now marked by a Star of David worn on their body, portrayed ultra-nationalistic values; not knowing it would later result in mass murder. Later; Hitler’s anti-Semitism laws blamed Jews for Germany’s conflicts, and in an attempt to expand German Territory; Jews were eliminated

The Holocaust was the mass murder of over six million Jews during World War II, as well as over five million other prisoners in a state-sponsored genocide. Lead by Adolf Hitler, the Nazi party came to power in 1933 Germany. Out of the 9 million Jews that had lived in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two thirds were killed. During this time, over 40,000 German facilities were turned into concentration camps or holding camps where citizens were killed in mass murders. In these camps Jews and prisoners were subjected to slavery until extreme exhaustion or disease killed them.

Extermination camps (Or death camps) were built to systematically kill millions of people via execution, mainly by the use of gas chambers where prisoners were lead to large rooms, bodies from the chambers were then burned in large ovens. Along with that, victims were taken to “killing centres” disguised as hospitals and were euthanized. In the last months of the war, Guards forced prisoners on “death marches” to hide all living proof of the camps. During this thousands of pages of documents were destroyed.

Prisoners prepared to enter the gas chambers

 Gas Chambers at Auschwitz

The Nazi Soldiers kept the people fated to die unaware of what was ahead of them. They were told that they were being sent to the camp, but that they first had to undergo disinfection and bathe. After the victims undressed, they were taken into the gas chamber, locked in, and killed with Zyklon B gas. Once dead, the corpses were taken out of the chambers, the women we're removed of their hair and all victims were burned in large pits, on pyres, or in the crematorium furnaces. (Until September 1942, some of the corpses were buried in mass graves; these corpses were burned from September to November 1942.)

A Holocaust survivor displays the identification number tattooed on his arm. 
All prisoners were required to show the numbers before execution as the Nazi 
party recorded them and were later found in record, backing the proof that over
5 million people were killed. 

Initially these identification numbers were sewn onto clothes, but with the rapidly rising death rate, it became difficult to identify corpses since clothing was removed prior to murder. In May 1944, the Jewish men received the letters "A" or "B" to indicate particular series of numbers. For some unknown reason, this number series for women never began again with the "B" series after they had reached the number limit of 20,000 for the "A" series.

Germany Surrendered to Allies on May 8th, 1945, but once the Allies liberated the concentration camps; many prisoners did not have a home to return to. The holocaust devastated many communities and the land across Europe, and Jews eventually immigrated to to Israel, Australia, and other countries after World War II. Hitler was confident that if Armenian genocide perpetrators were not punished and got away with what they did, he too, could use the world’s indifference and silence as a permit to proceed with mass destruction of Jewish people.Trials were held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, the Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949.  The first trial, and best known of these trials, described as "the greatest trial in history", Held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, Twenty-four individuals were indicted, along with six Nazi organizations determined to be criminals. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and  Joseph Goebbels, all of whom had been the driving force behind the Holocaust, committed suicide several months before therefore were absent from the trial. The Nuremberg trials are now regarded as a milestone toward the establishment of a permanent international court, and an important precedent for dealing with later instances of genocide and other crimes against humanity.

Current Life Expectancy of German Citizens 


















(Watch me stutter as I try to summarize the holocaust)