The Holocaust: Difference between revisions

|Image=Holocaust.jpg

|perpetrator= [[Nazi Party]]<br>[[Schutzstaffel]]<br>[[Sturmabteilung]]<br>[[Gestapo]]<br>[[Einsatzgruppen]]<br>[[Imperial Japan]]<br>[[Arrow Cross Party]]<br>[[Ahnenerbe]]<br>[[Ustaše]]<br>[[Sicherheitsdienst]]<br>[[Slovak People's Party]]<br>[[Italian Social Republic]]<br>[[Nasjonal Samling]]<br>[[Republican Fascist Party]]<br>[[Belarusian Central Council]]<br>[[Vichy France]]<br>[[National Legionary State]]<br>[[Iron Guard]]<br>[[Hellenic State]]<br>[[Trawnikis]]<br>[[Wehrmacht]]<br>[[Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists]]<br>[[Government of National Salvation]]<br>[[Reich Main Security Office]]<br>[[Ordnungspolizei]]

|date = 1941 - May 8, 1945

 

 

|motive = To purge Europe of Jews in order to favor the "Aryans" of Germany.

 

|crimes = [[Genocide]]<br>[[Crimes against humanity]]<br>[[War crimes]]<br>[[Ethnic cleansing]]<br>[[Torture]]<br>Mass [[murder]]

}}

{{Quote|The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.|Stephan Ambrose}}

'''The Holocaust''', also known as '''the Shoah''' and the '''Final Solution to the Jewish Question''' (or simply the '''Final Solution''') was a government-orchestrated mass [[genocide]] that affected approximately six million Jews or more during the final years of [[World War II]]. The Holocaust was orchestrated by the Nazi Germany dictator, [[Adolf Hitler]], and it advocated the idea of doing away with several fragments of society. This included other groups such as: Black people (incluiding African immigrants), LGBT people (including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender); Slavs (including Russians, Ukrainians, Serbians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks), Romani, Greeks; various Christian denominations (primarily Jehovah’s Witnesses and Catholics); Muslims; Brown people (incluiding Mulattoes and Mamelukes); communists, socialists, capitalists, anarchists, feminists, and other dissidents and Allied POWs, especially Soviet POWs.

Though the Nazis were the primary perpetrators of the Holocaust, the wider network of regimes that comprised the [[Axis Powers]] (such as [[Benito Mussolini]]'s Italy, the Croatian [[Ustaše]], and, to a lesser extent, [[Imperial Japan]], among others) also participated in the genocide.  

{{Quote|We shall only talk of peace when we have won the war. The Jewish capitalist world will not survive the twentieth century.|Adolf Hitler}}The Holocaust was established through stages. At first, the German government passed laws that excluded Jews from social affairs, such as with the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship and forbade Jews to marry non-Jewish Germans.

{{Quote|It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.|Elie Wiesel}}The Holocaust was set off with an event known as ''[[Kristallnacht]]'', or the "Night of Broken Glass", a [[pogrom]] carried out by both the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'' and the ''[[Schutzstaffel]]'' (the Nazi Party's two primary paramilitary forces) on November 9 and 10, 1938. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked and [[Vandalism|vandalized]] as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. The whole event was overseen by Minister of Propaganda [[Joseph Goebbels]].

This event set in motion mass deportations of Jews to [[Concentration Camp|concentration camps]] over the next several years while the Nazis went from country to country, pillaging and conquering. Later on in 1941, a paramilitary [[death squad]], dubbed the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'', was established, and their job was to execute civilian stragglers in conquered Nazi territories.

By the end of 1942, [[Martin Bormann]] had signed a decree that stated the Jews were to be killed rather than deported. As a result, many European Jews were forcibly taken to the various camps set up in Nazi territories on freight trains. If any Jewish person was fortunate enough to survive the trip to the death camps, they would almost always find themselves being executed in [[Gas Chamber|gas chambers]] disguised as shower rooms. Others would be put to work doing extremely difficult forced labor with little to no food, and often died from overwork or starvation. This was part of the so called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", to exterminate all the Jews in Europe.

During the genocide, SS-Hauptsturmführer [[Amon Göth]], who served as the commandant of Płaszów concentration camp in Poland from 1943 to 1944, personally executed over 500 people, arguably the most [[murder]]s committed by one man in Nazi Germany.

Other Nazis that were involved in the genocide, such as [[Hermann Göring]] and [[Heinrich Himmler]], committed suicide before they even got to trial; others such as [[Amon Göth]] were captured and put into Soviet labor camps or were executed. Still others, such as [[Adolf Eichmann]], [[Franz Stangl]], and [[Klaus Barbie]], remained on the lam for decades before being captured.

{{Quote|For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.|Elie Wiesel}}The Holocaust is believed to be the most horrific example of humanity at its worst. The Holocaust was also the most significant genocide to have ever occurred in the 20th century, leading to the deaths of approximately 11 million people, including children. Many people were killed in absolutely deplorable ways, including various forms of sadistic [[torture]]. Many victims of the Nazi Party's campaign of carnage would either be burned to death in the various ovens scattered throughout the camp, or some would even be forced to dig their own graves, and then be shot into said graves after they were finished digging. Many Jews were starved beyond recognition, and some of the Jewish people would be so weakened from malnutrition, that they would often fall into ditches whenever they escaped their captivity from the hands of Hitler and the Nazis. Many Jewish people were also [[Nazi Medical Experimentation|used as human guinea pigs in various experiments]]. For example, many Nazi doctors, such as [[Josef Mengele]] (who was perhaps the most infamous of the Nazi doctors) attempted to change their eye and hair colors to match what they considered to be the superior race, and these experiments would often lead to failure. Many people of Jewish descent were killed from these failed experiments. Because of this fact, many Nazi doctors were found guilty for crimes against humanity, and were executed.

*Pink - LGBT people, as well as other people who the Nazis considered sexually immoral, namely rapists, [[Pedophilia|pedophiles]], [[Zoophilia|zoophiles]], [[necrophilia]]cs, incestuous etc.

[[Category:Anti-Semetic]]