Untitled

Rob Rayburn

Professor Mackin

POLS 101

November 13, 2010

UNTITLED

What is it about human nature that allows the wholesale extermination of entire ethnic groups of people? Although there have been several instances of the systematic genocide of various groups of people throughout world history, there has never been a single human tragedy in the history of man more brutal, devastating, or evil than the Holocaust. The horror that was the Holocaust of European Jews began long before the first gas chamber was used. The systematic destruction of the Jews began with the stripping of basic, fundamental civil liberties and individual human rights—ultimately, the very right to live and breathe among those. Jewish merchants were widely boycotted and harassed by the general German public. There was a very public anti-Jew propaganda campaign launched by German leaders. Anti-Semitism has never been more glaringly displayed in the history of the world.

An estimated six-seven million European Jews, plus several million other non-Jews (Gypsies, homosexual men, Soviet prisoners of war, to name a few) were exterminated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in the years 1939-1944. There are conflicting reports from myriads of historians as to how and why, exactly, the Holocaust happened in the first place. It is believed by many that Anti-Semitism has existed in the World since the Ancient times, with the Nazi-led extermination during WWII being the most recognizable example.

This environment (pure vitriol for the Jews) was cultivated in Germany and large parts of Europe and culminated in the 1935 “Nuremberg Law for the protection of the German Blood and German Honor.”A creation of Hitler, among other things, this particular law made it a crime for anyone of German or related blood to have relations, let alone marry anyone of Jewish ethnicity. More importantly, the law also stripped Jews of their citizenship. This was a crushing blow to the...