Joshua Nunez
5/16/18
History Paper
Mrs. Delgadillo
Holocaust
The Holocaust was a horrifying crime against humanity. Adolf Hitler led a nation of Germans who were trying to rid "inferior races". Hitler had a "final solution" to take care of anybody who he saw as inferior. "The plans included in the Final Solution included the deportation, exploitation, and eventual extermination of European Jews". (Grobman) His method was to kill any undesirables. He would use concentration camps and death camps. Within the years 1941-1945 over eleven million people were killed. Six million of those who died were killed simply because they were Jewish. Over one million children were also killed during the Holocaust. Nazis, Hitler's followers, killed over two thirds of the Jewish population in Europe. Groups that were brought to concentration camps and death camps included Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally or physically disabled people, and people who did not agree with the government.
The first concentration camps were established in 1933. In the beginning concentration camps were places that held people in protective custody. Victims for protective custody included those who were both physically and mentally ill, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews and anyone against the Nazis. By 1934 there were at least fifty concentration camps throughout Europe. In the beginning these camps were watched over by the police, and then Hitler had his security take over. Camps were set up for different reasons. Some for forced labor, others for medical experiments and, for death. Camps were set up along railroad lines, so that the prisoners would be close to their destination. As they were being transported either to a camp or from one to another, the soldiers kept telling the Jews to have hope. The conditions on the train were terrible. Many people died of starvation before they arrived. Most families ended up being separated when they arrived at a camp. Jews were forced to obey the guard's orders from the moment they arrived at the camps. The prisoners usually had marks on their clothes or numbers on their arms to identify them. The conditions of the camps were terrible and inhumane. Within the first few days of being at the camps, thousands of people died of hunger, starvation and disease. Other people died from the cruel punishments of the guards' beatings and torture.
In 1937, seven thousand Jews were in camps. By 1938, ten thousand more Jews were sent to camps. Jews were taken to camps if they expressed negative feelings about the government, if they married a non-Jew, if they were sick, mentally or physically, or if they had a police record. When someone escaped from the camp, all the prisoners in that group were shot. Nazis, who claimed that they did not necessarily hate Jews, seemed to enjoy making the Jews suffer. They also felt that slavery was better than killing their prisoners. Surrounding some of the camps in Poland was a forest that the Jews...
