Hannah Arendt's Opinions Surrounding The Holocaust

There are a lot of opinions surrounding the Holocaust that affected the European Jews before, during, and after World War two. The Holocaust was an historical event that included the killing of six million European Jews by Nazi Regime and their collaborators. Between the years 1941 and 1945, Jews were exterminated in a genocide, which was part of the efforts of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazis. Now that I have spent the last semester in this course on the History of the Holocaust, I have a much better appreciation for why Hannah Arendt would take the position that she does. Hannah Arendt was herself a Jew growing up in Nazi Germany. She was a witness to unimaginable human rights violations on regular basis. In The Handbook of Human Rights, Roger

A German Jew, Arendt understood anti-Semitism, experienced the denationalization of Jews in Germany, and witnessed how the world and even the Jewish Community largely ignored the plight of European Jews.” (59) Obviously many of her real life experiences led her to believe that human rights were non-existent in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe. Her experiences with anti-Semitism and denationalization of Jews in Germany must have been important experiences that helped to shape her opinion.

Anti-Semitism was one of the main foundations of Nazi Germany and the abomination of human rights for Jews. The Germans were generally being taught that they were a superior race while the Jews were an inferior race (or untermensch). This lead to