...Throughout the movie, "The Holocaust", the phrase, "I just do my job," was usually the only excuse most people who committed crimes against the Jews could come up with. For example, when Helena and Rudy Weiss were staying in Kiev, the city was bombed. During the bombing, one of the Nazi soldiers, who happened to be Heinz Muller, a friend of Inga's family, was hit by falling debris. Hesitant, Rudy helped Muller escape from the collapsing building, gave him some water, and asked him why he was taking part in the mistreatment of the Jews. "I obey orders," Muller replied, unrepentant about what he did. Also, when Bertha Weiss was sent to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, Dr. Joseph Weiss asked the Kapo what happened to her. The lady bluntly retorted, "Don't blame me, I just take orders." Whether to keep a job, remain loyal to their cause, or just because they had no other excuse, everyone used that phrase to justify what they did wrong against the Jews. Anti-Semitism and unfair grudges are two factors that can cause Genocide. During the movie, Eric Dorf claimed he did not feel bad about Kristallnacht or what happened to the Jews, because he said the Jews provoked it. Even though Kristallnacht was the first major pogrom, a government sponsored attack on the Jews, and was terribly destructive, Eric said that they killed Christ and they deserved what they got (The Holocaust). In addition, Heydrich believed that Germans and the Aryan race was superior to the Jewish race and they had to...
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...March 2015 Holocaust Research Paper The Holocaust was one of humanity’s worst catastrophes in history. No one thought that something so evil could happen in the 20th century in one of the most educated country in the world. When Hitler’s Nazi Party took over Germany, anti-semitism was encouraged. Having blond hair, blue eyes made someone an “Aryan”, this is what Nazis thought was supposed to be the master race. The Nazis blamed the Jews, mentally and physically handicapped, and other supposedly inferior races of Germany’s downfall. They believed that the handicapped were “useless eaters” and the Jews were inferior creatures. They believed that if they cleansed themselves of these “diseases” that...
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...Jared Livingston Grade 12 Period 3-4 February 11, 2014 American History The Holocaust The Holocaust was one of the twentieth century's greatest tragedy that left a mark of tragic and horror to all Jews. The tragedy began at January 30th, 1933 and ended at May 8th, 1945, when the war in Europe ended. Millions of people died during the Holocaust, some were killed by machine guns, gas chambers, getting burned, while others died due to starvation, abuse and diseases. Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, was a heartless and uncaring man. He was born on April 20, 1889 in a small Austrian town of Braunau near Germany’s border. Hitler’s father Alios Hitler was a short-tempered, strict and brutal father. It is known that Alios would always beat Hitler when he was young. Hitler’s mother, Klara Hitler, was the opposite of Alios Hitler. She was very caring and loving to her son. When Hitler’s father died, Hitler dropped out of school at an early age because he lost his strong influence into keeping him at school. His mother supported him with this idea. Hitler loved and showed so much companionship to his mother more than his father. When she died at 1907, her death affected him far more deeply than the death of his father. He carried her picture wherever he went and, it is claimed that he had the photo in his hand when he died in 1945. Hitler and the Nazis were the masterminds of the Holocaust. Hitler had so much arrogance in him. He hated and envied the Jews. The Jews at...
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...Parallel Journeys, by Eleanor Ayer with Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck, compares the life of two young people in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of World War II. They were born within sixty miles of each other, but their lives took dramatically different paths. Alfons, is a boy who grew up on a farm in Germany. When Hitler came to power he became involved with the Hitler Youth. Alfons grew up on a farm but was a Nazi boy who became a commander at age sixteen. This book truly depicts Hitler's impact and influence on the youth of Germany. Alfons was brainwashed by Hitler's promises, a full pledged Nazi youth is how it is presented in the book he participated in all rallies. He started his training to become the future of Germany and eventually of the world. There he learned discipline and order. He trained to become a soldier and he learned the ways of warfare. He was taught to be a follower of anti-Semitism and was told to hate the Jewish people. He along with millions of Nazi’s believed that they were the reason for Germany's problems. As years went by, Alfons rose through the ranks of the military until the end of the war where realized what atrocities had been committed, he than took off his uniform and went on to help people. On the other side of the spectrum we have Helen Waterford a young Jewish girl who grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. She married Siegfried Wohlfarth and moved to Amsterdam because of tension brewing in Frankfurt. She had a baby girl...
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...71335 November 11, 14 The events of the Holocaust evoke such strong emotions that films portraying the horrors of the time period are considered inappropriate depictions of them. Films such as Schindler’s List and The Pianist take a serious historical approach to the Holocaust, while films like Life is Beautiful take a different approach to it. It is the combination of romance, comedy, and tragedy that triggered many viewers into criticizing Life is beautiful as being oblivious to the Holocaust’s reality, therefore making it inappropriate. However, A filmmaker is not a historian, and is not responsible for Depicting the holocaust as accurate as possible, the film does in fact present the dichotomy of life before and after the holocaust, without leaving out the fact that thousands of people were murdered and battered in the duration of the holocaust. it is the honest presentation of human relations, the main focus between the love of a father and son and the artistic form presented in the film that make the film appropriate. It’s appropriate because filmamkers who portray the holocaust are not obligated to depict the horrors of the events. Holocaust filmmakers are not necessaraly historians who seek to portray historic events as they actually happen. It IS appropriate because the film presents, the dicotamy of Life before the holocaust and after. It is apporpiate becausebinigni was never oblivious to the holocaust in his film, because there are scenes that actually...
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...“I died in Auschwitz, but no one knows it”. These are the words of Charlotte Delbo, a survivor of Auschwitz. For many men and women Auschwitz was a time of great fear, death and despair. The Auschwitz concentration camp was a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II, and commanded by Rudolf Hoss (1900-1947). It included three main camps. All three camps used prisoners for forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center. These concentration camps were made up of mainly Jewish people. An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, and at least 1.1 million died. Around 90 percent of those were Jews. As a matter of fact,...
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...Josh Thompson History Ms. Kadlecek 7 April 2014 Remembering The word holocaust means “sacrifice by fire” and comes from the Greek words “holos” meaning whole and “kaustos” meaning burnt. The Holocaust of the 20th century was the mass murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi command during World War II. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he states, “…in their early days of their accession to power, the Nazis in Germany set out to build a society in which there simply would be no room for Jews. Toward the end of their reign, their goal changed: they decided to leave behind a world in ruins in which Jews would seem never to have existed” (viii). The shock and horror does not lessen regardless of how many times a book or article is read or a movie watched about the Holocaust. Learning about the horrible, dark period from 1935 – 1945 is important in several ways. On one hand, it has been said we must learn about the past in order not to relive it. However, we are also told not to dwell in the past. When studying the Holocaust, both adages have truth. Chilling questions occur when learning about the Holocaust. They are questions that Elie Wiesel repeated in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. Wiesel says he remembers asking his father, “Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” (118). Millions of Jews were killed by overwork, starvation, torture, and cold blooded murder just because they were a different race and...
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...The Holocaust The Holocaust remains, and will continue to remain as one of the most horrific things that has happened to a group of people. The absolute inhumanity of the Holocaust puzzles people even today. Contemporary people wonder just how it happened, how people could be systematically killed, tortured, murdered. The answer will probably never be found, but future generations can avoid something like the Holocaust by studying it, and never forgetting. The Nazi’s did not start out with “The Final Solution”, which did not come till later. The distinction of who was “Aryan” and who were not was very important to Hitler. This distinction allowed the Jews and others to be discriminated against. At this time the German people probably have no idea what these laws will lead to. Next came the exclusion of the Jew from the arts by the Reich Chamber of Culture, every time a right was stripped away from a Jew it was easier to view them as not human. In September of 1933 the Nazis prohibit Jews from owning land; the rights of the Jewish people were being taken away at a frightening pace. In 1934 Jews are banned from the German Labor Front, not allowed national health insurance, and prohibited from getting legal qualifications. The following year Nazis ban Jews from serving in the military. Jews were prohibited from trading and providing a variety of specified commercial services, the Nazis ordered Jews over age 15 to apply for identity cards from the police. Jewish doctors were...
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...directed at disabled and people with special needs * Laws/restrictions put on Jews in 1935, preventing them from having businesses/other benefits, also prevented them from flourishing * By Germans, pictures shown that they were proud of what they did. By Jews, taking pictures of the horrors that were displayed * Longest standing ghetto, had the most Jews and is where the jewish rebellion/uprising started * Mass killing of a race * People that fough Nazi’s through different methods * People(100) that he saved from the factory by creating his own ghetto and then sent them to another of his and kept them alive * Adolf Ikeman, testified bringing Nazi atrocities to light, testifying against the Nazis and showing off the horrors. * When Germany had no clue what to do with the Jews because their population became too large * Germany ran out of raw materials. Army vs Business. Only had enough to supply production for one. Hitler eliminated both sides so that he would be the only power * Became good and didn’t want to kill anyone. Concentration camps were created because they couldn’t kill people anymore. * Between Moscow and Berlin. Territories where the Holocaust took place and...
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...clock television updates on prevalent issues. At a time when technology limited forms of communication, newspapers accumulated a majority of the responsibility for informing the public. Surprisingly, America as a nation, usually well informed and considerate of global issues and situations, left the Holocaust, the genocide of over six million Jews, Gypsies and handicapped across Germany and Poland, in the shadows of the concurrent war. Beginning in 1939, European countries engaged in a war that America clearly seemed unprepared to participate in. When America finally entered the war, the domestic concerns it faced at the time held precedence, even though it received news of the atrocities in Europe. The Holocaust, initially neglected as front-cover news, now holds a major concern and memory in American history. Since the start of World War II, strengthened and advanced reactions to the horrors of The Holocaust have ensued from simultaneously increasing publicity. As war broke out across Europe, Americans laid back, hoping to continue isolationist efforts. Still recovering from the Depression, newspaper companies held a large monopoly of the public information distribution (Holocaust). American citizens simply remained unaware that millions of people were suffering from discrimination and hatred. The New York Times, one of the most prominent publishing powers in America, held a delicate, complicated stance on the situation as news of the victimization and mass destruction of thousands...
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...“For me the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy,” said Simon Wiesenthal. “After the war, when I saw that the Jews were talking only about the tragedy of six million Jews, I sent letters to Jewish organizations asking them to talk also about the millions of others who were persecuted with us together – many of them only because they helped Jews.” Mr. Wiesenthal was just one of the survivors from the brutal Holocaust who will forever remember the worst time of his life. How he was torn away from his family and was used as a slave for the Nazis. Yet he was still able to have sympathy and think about others. The Holocaust had a significant impact on America by giving lessons about genocides and preventing other genocides, how they punished war criminals after the...
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...laws such as the Nuremberg Principles and the Genocide Convention to hold individual responsible for crimes against humanity. Countries have engaged in war crimes for thousands of years in violation of the established laws and customs of war. Torture, rape, massacres, genocide, and atrocities documented over centuries continue today. This paper will discuss some of the heinous crimes committed during War World II Holocaust and the Hutu massacre of the Tutsis. War Crimes the Executioners and the Victims of Genocide Military powers around the world inflict some of the most atrocious crimes against humanity, and in each case, there are executioners and victims of these crimes that never get fair justice. “ The German concentration camps of World War II, the horrors of the Vietnam War, the prolific rape and brutality during the break- up of the former Yugoslavia and the Hutu massacres of the Tutsis in Rwanda,” ("20th Century," n.d., p. 5) are just a few named conflicts that displayed devastating atrocities. The executioners in the World War II Holocaust and the Hutu Massacres in Rwanda caused terrible massacre to the human race more than any other conflict in history. These crimes all have a negative impact on the country and the citizens that live there. Every leader, citizen, and Soldier has a responsibility to report criminal acts committed in war. War crimes and atrocities will leave unshakable scares that will last for generations to come. World War II atrocities...
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...because you’d be considered a minority- how would you imagine yourself feeling the moment of liberation? Take a moment to picture this in your mind: after being in the concentration camp where you’d starve, be mistreated, and abused, you hear rumors of foreign troops on their way to free you. Consequently, upon hearing this, the cruel Nazi leaders tried to move you all from the camp, where hundreds died on these death marches, and yet they still tried to destroy all the evidence of their crimes that they could. The soldiers came and freed all the people in the...
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...After watching the documentary on the descendants of many high commanding officers under Adolf Hitler during WW2 and the period of Nazi dominance, I was astounded at the level of guilt that the surviving members carried with them during their day to day lives. Before watching this video, not once had I ever even considered the fact that family members of the Nazi high command were around today, let alone the guilt that inevitably follows them. As I listened and watched the descendants share their experience, I noticed many different methods were used to cope with the horror that a family member from a generation or two ago carried out on an entire group of people. A few of those methods included, moving to a different country, changing their...
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...The past is the past, right? Not when it comes to the horrific incident known as the Holocaust. This dented our cruelty-free world as well as killing millions of people. Why did they do it? We’ll find out. We will also be discussing some history, as well as taking a deeper look into the tragedy we know now as the Holocaust. The whole thing started January 30, 1993. The dangers of walking outside of your house, or the dangers of being in it as well. Being invaded by the Nazi’s at any point in time. Everyone feared being shot by the Nazis. Hitler was an evil leader. Adolf Hitler, born April 20, 1889, died, April 30, 1945. Hitler was the leader of the Nazi’s. The Holocaust was a big part in World War 2. The Holocaust was a killing of over 6 million Jewish people and millions of others. The Nazis would bring people to death camps or concentration camps, or maybe both....
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