Cause And Effects Of The Holocaust

Throughout history, wars have plagued mankind. They are caused by greed, rage, and fear. We fear those who are different from us and that can lead to great hate. Hatred and fear can drive man to extreme lengths in what they view as self preservation. Although, it is sometimes for simpler reasons that moral and legal crimes against humankind are committed. When we want something, be it land, money, or power, some may stop at nothing to get it. One of, if not the, most infamous genocide in history is the Holocaust. The massacre of Jews and others occurred only because of widespread fear of those who were different. Hitler, an anti-Semitist, came to power and persuaded the citizens of Germany and Europe that anyone who was not white and Christian,

The loss of life was monumental and it sparked the second World War. Beginning on January 30, 1933 and ending May 8, 1945, almost 11 million lives were lost and 6 million of those were the lives of Jews. The German leader, Adolf Hitler, came to power on January 30, 1933. This date set into motion the ripple effect of events that began the Holocaust. Hitler sanctioned the swearing in of 40,000 SA and SS officers less than a month later. Nazis open Dachau, the first regular concentration camp, on March 22, exactly one month after the new batch was sworn in. The Gestapo is created by Hermann Göring on April 26, 1933. On September 15, 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed. Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, started on November 9 and continued through November 10, 1938. The first major slaughter of the Jewish people led to many Jews being sent to concentration camps. February 12, 1940, marked the first deportation of German Jews into Poland. The construction of Auschwitz began on January 25, 1940. The German Jews began the forced labor on March 7, 1941. Later that year, the Final Solution is put into action at Auschwitz and Chelmno becomes operational. On December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred and the United States officially went to war with Japan and, four days later, Hitler declares war on the United States as well. The brutal exterminations continued for another four

Organized, cruel, and, perhaps worst of all, government sanctioned, the killers were able to commit these horrendous crimes legally. Both had underlying drives from religion. For the Armenians, it was their Christianity which made them targets, at least in part, and during the Holocaust it was Judaism and other minorities such as homosexuality. Though millions were killed, there was survivors left to tell us their stories. We can look upon what was wrought by the perpetrators of the villainy that occurred in abject horror but we can never experience the feeling that everyone around us were our enemies, that nowhere was truly safe. We have never known what it is like to live with constant vigilance, always having to keep one eye open. The survivors of tragedies tell their stories and the stories of those who did not make it. These stories are the closest that we can get to the actual events and, in order to properly pay homage to the dark past of mankind, we must learn all that we can from the evidence and eyewitness accounts that we have obtained. Each of these catastrophes left the people in its path scarred, the images of the past seared into their minds forever. The methods employed were similar as well. Deportations, camps, death marches, and mass killings were used in both the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler even mentioned the Armenian genocide in one of his