Holocaust and WWII

Leah Frye-Wilson

Wars and Revolutions: World History

The Holocaust was a terrible part of WWII involving the Nazi German population under the rule of Hitler. The Nazis, believing that they were superior to the Jews, began a mass genocide, killing approximately 4 million people.

The Nazis made a policy called the Final Solution to murder all the Jews of Europe.

The Nazis killed nearly every two out of three Jewish people. According to this statistic only one of the children in this picture would have survived.

Although the Jewish were primarily targeted during the Holocaust, they were not the only ones the Nazis murdered. They also killed hundreds of Roma (Gypsies), disabled people, homosexuals, and some of the Slavic peoples.

The Nazi Germans created concentration camps were people of the Jewish religion were kept and incarcerated, starved, or forced to work.

The Germans are responsible for the cruel and unjust deaths of over 4 million people, and over what? Power. Hitler was controlled by power and anyone he considered a threat, he would kill by the hundreds.

One of the most horrible things to happen in German concentration camps happened on November 3, 1943, also known as “Bloody Wednesday”.

These are all shoes taken from thepeople who were murdered that day at Majdanek, the concentration camp in Poland. In late October 300 prisoners were taken out behind the compounds and told to dig three trenches 100 meters long and 2 meters deep. On the morning of November 3, groups of 100 people at a time were taken and forced to undress and lie down in the trenches where they were shot by SS men and policemen. 300 women and 300 men

were kept alive to sort the clothing and possessions of the people just murdered. They were later on gassed and cremated by the SS men. Approximately 18,000 Jewish people were killed on Bloody Wednesday.

The holocaust finally ended when the German army surrendered to Allied forces on May 7, 1945.

Sources

"Introduction to the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Web. 07 Nov. 2011. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005143>.

Rosenburg, Jennifer. "Aktion Erntefest - Part 2." 20th Century History. Web. 09 Nov. 2011. <http://history1900s.about.com/cs/persecution/a/erntefest_2.htm>.

"A Complete and Detailed Definition of the Holocaust." Holocaust Remembrance, Sanctuary, and Tribute to Survivors. Web. 09 Nov. 2011. <http://isurvived.org/Holocaust-definition.html>.