WWII. One of the most talked about wars, and certainly one of the worst wars in modern history. A popular topic dealing with WWII is the Nazis and their discriminatory acts against the Jewish. We all know that what they did to the Jewish was cruel, inhuman, and unacceptable. But do we really know what it was like to be Jewish under Nazi Germany? Being Jewish under the reign of Nazi Germany was dangerous because of the abuse, discrimination, and characterization.
Being Jewish during WWII wasn’t nice. With Hitler’s new plan, and through his widespread propaganda, he was able to silence the public from talking about the horrors that were inflicted on the Jewish for a long time. Some of these horrors include the incarceration and murder of
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Characterization. Or in simpler terms, a description of the distinctive nature or features of someone or something. Many times in the war, Jews were faced with characterization, inside, and outside of the camps. Examples of this being the act of painfully needling numbers onto prisoners, and the act of tagging Jewish residents like cattle. This characterization allowed for discrimination to be very likely, since anyone could see a Jew’s ethnicity, just by looking at the yellow star on their clothes. “In the same month came the notorious edict requiring Jews over the age of six to wear the yellow Jewish Star (Magen David) on their outermost garment.” (Holocaust Memorial Museum, German Jews). The Stars weren’t the only problem however, the Numbering system also made efforts to characterize the Jewish Prisoners. Being captured as a prisoner at that time meant that they were now just a series of numbers to the Nazis. No one knew the Jews' backstory, their name, or their connections, all they knew was their number. This way of treating people like livestock would’ve damaged many, in addition to the labor and abuse they also faced. “Originally, a special metal stamp, holding interchangeable numbers made up of needles approximately one centimeter long was used. This allowed the whole serial number to be punched at one blow onto the prisoner's left upper chest. Ink was then rubbed into the bleeding wound.”(Holocaust Memorial Museum, Tattoos). This shows just how damaging the Nazi's ways were toward the Jewish, and just how much the Jewish had to suffer. Needles and Stars, however, weren’t the only driving factors in what made characterization so brutal for the Jewish. One of the main engines driving this hatred was the people themselves, as their ideologies, fueled and morphed by the propaganda, were directly aimed at the Jewish themselves. This can be seen in this excerpt from an article talking about the significance of