Holocaust Essay

We all know that Jewish people were the main targets in the Holocaust, but not many people know that other groups and races. Some groups that were killed are but not limited to: disabled people, LGBTQIA+ people, Roma Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Polish People and people of African descent. While Jewish people should be recognized for their struggles, so should every other group.

Disabled People

Hitler didn’t want to have any disabled people in Nazi Germany. He thought that they were too much work and overall useless to society.

"In the postwar world, Auschwitz has come to symbolize genocide in the twentieth century. But Auschwitz was only the last, most perfect Nazi killing center. The entire killing enterprise had started in January 1940

Jehovah Witnesses were well known in Nazi Germany for not straying from the words of Jehovah. This was very threatening to Hitler, as they refused to sign documents of loyalty to the Third Reich. This caused them to be treated like ‘dangerous’ traitors to Hitler and be sent to camps.

People of Polish Descent

Other than Jewish people, Hitler was especially against Poles, infamously saying to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the lebensraum [perfect living space] we need," to his army. Hitler attacked Poland from the west, north and south on September 1, 1939 and took away all of Polish Jews and non-Jews by October 8 of the same year. There were certain rules that were in place, including:

The Polish press was to be destroyed and Polish libraries and bookstores were to be burned

Polish towns/cities were to be renamed in German

Absolute destruction of Polish history and culture

Of-age Polish men were to be forced into the German army

Polish art and culture were to be

During World War I, black soldiers came in by the French during the Allied occupation. A lot of Germans hated the “invasion” of dark-skinned people. Children of women who married said men were called "Rhineland Bastards" or the "Black Disgrace". Hitler, of course, was against anyone who was not white or of non-white decent. Quoted from Mein Kampf, “the mulatto children came about through rape or the white mother was a whore. In both cases, there is not the slightest moral duty regarding these offspring of a foreign race.” He also said he would eliminate all the children born of African-German descent because he considered them an "insult" to the German nation. A special group was set up by the Nazis to keep Germany white called Commission Number 3. In 1937, they would require local police to list all children of African descent to be on a list, submitted to the Third Reich. After they located them, the children would be stolen from their homes or schools without parent consent and sterilized in a hospital. At least 400 children were sterilized without their parents’ permission- or