worst week ever

The holocaust:
Why America didn’t want to be involved.
“Those who want to live let them fight and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.” - Mein Kampf
Devastated by their defeat in World War I, the German people were serching for a new hero to restore their pride in themselves and in their country. They found this person in Adolf Hitler (later to known as the Fuhrer) a rejected painter/ architect from Austria. Whose strong dialogue captured thousands of Germans. Even though Hitler was not a German by birth, his love for Germany was greater than anything else; he would do anything to any extent to reunite the German people in a mighty empire once again. But life wasn’t all glory and pride for everyone, this only applied to full Germans. Hitler promised hope and prosperity to all Germans, but to the Jewish community, there was noting but fear and terror in their future. While the rest of the world was at war, the Fuhrer was waging yet another more sinister, evil war against a group of innocent citizens. Hitler ordered the starvation, torture and death of millions of Jews and other groups that he considered inferior. In Mein Kampf Hitler blamed the Jews for the countries dilemmas and the defeat in World War I. Then twenty years later, his hatred burned even stronger. In one of his private conversations with his private secretary, Martin Bormann, he made clear of his plans for dealing with, “the Jewish menace”. Hitler had said, “On the eve of the war I gave the Jews a final warning. I told them that if they caused another war they would not be spared, and I would exterminate the vermin [Jews] throughout Europe,” pg 138 Mein Kampf. As soon as Hitler’s rise to power during the depression he was quick to undergo what he would call, the Third Reich led by Hitler himself and the National Socialist German workers party, (later to be known as the Nazi party) and all other pedestrians who called themselves his followers. Then soon had it been declared the start of World War II on September 1, 1939.
In the beginning Jews were encouraged to liquidate all their possessions and leave the country. Some like Albert Einstein and others fled to America, but others who doubted Hitler’s power to exterminate an entire nation were far wrong.
The U.S, Britain, and other countries had closed their borders due to quotas. The country had exceeded in capacity, and the borders to another freer land had been shut off to immigrants, this including Jews. Not only that it was also expensive to travel to North America, This would have to mean that a person would have to start a whole new life and put everything they had left put behind, and so not all could afford it. Also many people were anti-Semites and they didn’t want any competions for jobs. Therefore, the Jews and other ethnic groups were left nowhere to go, but stay in Europe and await their destiny.
Adolph Hitler’s Jewish question flourished in his teens; “I recognized the Jew as the cold-hearted, shameless, and calculating director of this revolting vice traffic in the scum of the big city.” Pg 59 Mein Kampf. Hitler blamed Germany’s troubles on the Jewish community. He exposed his idea of what he called, the Aryan Race. Soon enough Germans would be giving Jews noting but cold, harsh stares.
It wasn’t until three years into the war that Jew racism was being seen more and more often. A new decree: Every Jew was obligated to wear the yellow Star of David; failure to do so would result in death. Short couple weeks after the labeling of the Jews, came the ghettos. Jews were forced to live in these filthy places, with limited space. (Ghettos were about 4 blocks as big.) About seven to fourteen people shared one room. The ghettos had a barbed electric wire that encircled the ghetto like a wall. Food was limited, and illness was all around. Some died of these conditions, at times people would collapse and their bodies would go unnoticed.
In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel tells about his life during the holocaust, he describes the ghettos after a while, “a good thing. We no longer had to have to look at these hostile faces, endure those hate-filled stares, No more fear. No more anguish; we would live among Jews, among Brothers.” Pg 12
The ghettos were only a small period of what was going to come next, even worst conditions were yet to come and the journey did not end in the ghettos for the Jewish people, one of the cruelest mass murders ever to be committed in history was only around the corner, and the mastermind was only getting started.
Military losses took a terrible toll on Hitler, but at the same time it strengthened his resolve to win the other war he was conducting; the war against the Jews. Hitler’s plan to get rid of the minority wasn’t going according to plan. So he established what he called, the Final solution on January 20, 1942, after invading the USSR. A small meeting was held in Berlin, Wannsee to declare this. Although the words mass murder or extermination were never used during the conference, it was clear to everyone at the meeting meant by the term Final Solution. Although Reinhard Heydrich [second in command of SS under Henrich Himmler] and Heinrich Himmler were responsible for carrying it out, the plan was Hitler’s alone.
Jews were now to be rounded up and taken into Nazi concentration camps; or the ‘killing centers’, located in Poland. Children and the old were to be killed first men and women would be worked till death. Here millions of Jews were put to death quickly by putting having them do slave labor and having them put in chambers filled with gas, then their bodies were to be burned in the ovens. The Nazis even had the Jewish prisoners do the burning.

In these death camps only the strong survived. “Upon entering the gates of Auschwitz I, the prisoners saw over the main entrance the words; "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work will make you free). These words were to promote the false hope that hard work by the prisoners would result in their freedom. Indeed the camp, and later the "Buna" of Auschwitz III, made extensive use of slave labor; however, death was the only real escape.”
By a month of staying in these camps, all a person was was flesh and bones. The most notorious camp of them all was Auschwitz, 405,000 prisoners were recorded as prisoners between 1940 and 1945 and about 340,000 were in some sort of execution, either by beatings, starvation, sickness or other even more harsh punishments. These camps consisted of unfathomable actions, and unbelievable actions against humanity.
The United States had just gotten out of World War I, and was tired of the continuous fighting. The concentration camps in Europe were kept hidden from society as best as it could from the other nations. The word got out but people did not know if to believe that one man was capable of such unfathomable crimes. In the novel The diary of Anne Frank, Anne says “I envy the German people, because in spite of everything, their fuhrer at least kept his promises.” Pg 69.
The US ordered and sent a large percentage of the armed forces to Europe in effort to stop the Hitler’s German Military. But the German forces had destroyed all the governments in Europe that attempted to stop their evil maneuvers.
England was close to retreating when the U.S. was drawn in, many U.S. politicians wanted to stay out of the war because it was considered "none of our business". But If the U.S. had not become caught up, Germany would have been successful.

-Other nations during the Holocaust had other affairs to deal with already. Hardly any country could rise up against the power of the Nazis. -
-The US allies did a wonderful job in saving the victims of the Holocaust. Though Jewish people have been tortured and bullied ever since time began. The world never cared about the Jews and never really will. Even today, the US stands alone in attempts to defend them. And no one favors Jews enough to fight for them. -

-However, the destruction of the Nazi regime was brought down rather quickly compared to other mass destruction attempts.-
The allies weren’t responsible for the events in the holocaust; it was truly “none of our business.” No one really knew about the whereabouts of the camps until after the war, not even the allies. We couldn’t have done much from preventing these atrocities from being committed, and if they would have not been done by Adolf Hitler, it would had eventually have been done at some point in history. How could they have such disregard for humanity? More than six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust; more than half were systematically exterminated. We must remember the holocaust and these six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis must always have a place in our history, our memory, and our fears. Never again shall the world or any minority have to face any atrocities committed by any man.

Bibliography Entries

Hitler, Adolph Mein Kampf translated by Ralph Manheim
New York: Boston 1999

Weisel, Elie Night New translation by Marion Weisel
New York: Union Square West 2006

Ayer, Eleanor H. The importance of Adolph Hitler
CA: San Diego, 1996

The Camps
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/holocamp.html

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070626112419AAAijnN
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090117154310AAcmxir