What were the major events that led up to the Holocaust?

Answer 1

• On 30 January 1933 Hitler became the chancellor of Germany.
• April 1933. Boycott of Jewish businesses (on 1st April). Jewish businesses forbidden to advertise. Most Jews dismissed from employment in the public sector in Germany and most Jewish students expelled from university. Harsh quotas imposed on numbers of Jews in most professions.
• Jews banned from working for the media and the stage.
• The Jews were stripped of German citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws in

  September 15, 1935.

• 1938 Jews banned completely from many professions. Forbidden to own firearms. Passports stamped with a large J.
• Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938 ended busines by Jews and the first mass arrests with 30,000 Jews sent to concentration camps.
• Jews banned from owning businesses.
• In 1939 Poland is invaded and the ghettos are established.
• 1939 (September onwards, in Germany) In most big cities Jews were ordered to move into designated Jewish apartment blocks. Curfews imposed on Jews. Forbidden to own radios, cars or even bicycles.
• The 1941 attack on the USSR, and the Einsatzgruppen are let loose against the countryside where they murdered more than a million Jews.
• 20 January 1942 - the Wannsee Conference co-ordinated the framework

  for the systematic extermination of the Jews.

• The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943.
• Hitler kills himself on 30 April 1945.
• The Holocaust ended on V-E Day, 8 May 1945.

Answer 2

The Holocaust was a terrible time when many people were killed. The first event was Hitler coming to power. This was followed by establishment of concentration camps and rounding up of Jewish people.

Answer 3

Many Germans (including Adolph Hitler) found out that they are NOT the master race, and committed suicide rather than take their deserved punishment for the horrors they committed from September 1939 to August 1945.

Answer 4

Any division of the past into stages is done after the events concerned and is arbitrary.

Different historians divide the Holocaust and the events leading up to it into different stages.

Some historians identify six main stages in the Holocaust and, more particularly, in the processes leading up to it. However, these stages overlapped and, apart from the last stage, there are many different ways of classifying the various events leading up to mass murder.

1. Definition/Identification
2. Isolation
3. Forced Emigration
4. Ghettoization
5. Deportation
6. Mass Murder

Other historians, though accepting this order of events in general terms, identify three main phases, at least in Germany:

1. 1933-1938: 'Expulsion from society'. This involved making it increasingly difficult for Jews to participate in German life and to earn a living. They were also subject to several very petty-minded restrictions. There was also the loss of full citizenship in 1935. These measures forced many German Jews to emigrate.

2. 1939-41: 'Ghettoization', though in Germany this usually involved making the Jews live in designated 'Jewish apartment blocks' and subjecting them to curfews. There were further vindictive restrictions. The Jews were isloated.

3. 1941 onwards: Deportation and murder.

In Germany, the process of identification had started long before the Nazis came to power. There was an unhealthy level of Jew-spotting. 'Is he/she one?' was considered important, spicy and somehow very revealing, rather like gay spotting nowadays.

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There were variations from country to country. However, throughout the territory under Nazi rule key stages (or really features) included: # Removing Jews from society in a way that made it extremely hard for them to earn a living. # Isolation (often ghettoization). # Physical annihilation.

However, a division (with hindsight) of the process into stages does not necessarily mean that there was a master plan.

Saul Friedlander split it into just two stages, persecution and extermination.

The most accurate separation into stages that you will get is by looking at when the legislation was made, or when the orders were given. (Please see the related question on Nazi anti-Jewish measures in Germany).

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One needs to be aware that these stages were classified and named long, long aftwerwards. It was not as if Jews in Germany were able to say in 1933-34, 'We needn't worry too much just now as we're only at Stage 1 (or whatever)'.

Also, for some Jews under Nazi rule, various 'stages' were telescoped together.

For example, deportations from Berlin began on 15 October 1941. The Nazi regime did not at that stage have mass gassing facitlities, so some were dumped in the Lodz Ghetto, but most were taken to Riga (Latvia) and Minsk (Belarus) and shot there very soon after arrival. A few spent some time in the local ghettos and a handful even survived - perhaps a dozen or so, who were moved on to other places.

(The matter of 'stages' has been complicated further by some recent claims that these 'stages' are a universal feature of genocide and mass murder. This gives them a 'fixed status' that they simply do not have).

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Obviously, as it didn't all happen 'in one go' many materials used in schools divide the process into various stages. However, one needs to be aware that these stages were classified and named long, long aftwerwards. It was not as if Jews in Germany were able to say in 1933-34, 'We needn't worry too much just now as we're only at Stage 1 (or whatever)'. Please see the related question.

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The Holocaust was a result of many decisions, of many situations and how to deal with them and of the actions of many people. There were many phases that it went through, it is up to you where you draw any particular line.

There were many stages within the Holocaust, the first murders on the eastern front, or the first orders to murder on the eastern front, the clearing of the ghettos, the decision to create a 'final solution', the decision to use poison gas, the acceptance and killing of Jews from other countries, the decision to hide the evidence.

Answer 5

The Jews being sent to the death camps such as auchschwitz was very important. It shows how evil people can be. We need to learn from all the evil done by Hitler and his arian army. The things done by them should never be repeated, and we should try to build a better society where people are all accepted equally with no prejudice against people. If we all got along there would b a lot less killing all around the world.

Answer 6

The holocaust was a horrible event that shall never be forgoten and everybody should learn from it in MANY different ways.

Answer 7

Please see the Related Link.