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Holocaust
The genocide of approximately 6 million European Jews during World War II planned by Adolf Hitler.
11,094 Questions
How many people died in the time period of 1941-1945 of the Holocaust?
I don't have the details, but the number of Jews killed by the Nazis before 1.1.1941 (and even 1.1.1942) was a very small proportion of the total number of Jews killed by the Nazis. One would need to look at:
- Deaths of Jews (in ordinary concentration camps) up to the end of 1940. These would have been mainly Jews sent there for their politics, not simply for being Jews.
- Deaths during and in the aftermath of Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938).
- Deaths in the ghettos established from October 1939 onwards.
- Jews killed in isolated incidents.
- Jews killed in the very early deportations from the Palatinate and Baden (October 1940). They were sent to Gurs concentration camp in France, not to extermination camps.
I would be surprised if the total number was more than 30,000 by 1.1.1941. Even one year later the vast majority of Jews under Nazi rule were still alive. That of course changed in 1942, 1943 and 1944. The actual genocide was carried out very quickly.
How did the nazis convince germans about the holocaust?
To make Germans think the Jews should be executed
How did the SS hide the evidence of extermination camps?
They didn't. The United States and other countries surrounding Germany knew what they were doing, they just either didn't do anything about it, or couldn't do anything about it.
AnswerNote that there is a difference between the concentration camps (essentially, prison and forced-labor camps holding "undesirable", with poor living conditions and often brutal treatment by the guards), and the extermination camps (or, death camps, where mostly Jews and Roma were sent to be immediately killed).The existence of the concentration and forced labor camps was well known, as they had existed well before WW2 started. The terrible conditions inside these camps were generally known shortly after the war began, via a variety of means, primarily from descriptions of escaped prisoners and through sympathetic (to the Allied cause) religious leaders making reports to their ecclesiastical superiors.
The establishment of the death camps didn't start until mid-1942, after the Wansee Conference defined the Final Solution to the Jewish Question and a plan for carrying it out. During 1942, several former forced labor and concentration camps were changed over or expanded to become death camps, and began their grisly work shortly afterwards. The first notice of the unique nature of the death camps (vs the more "ordinary" concentration camp) came through several eyewitness accounts of escaped refugees in 1943. They were discounted as exaggerations. However, by the middle of 1944, mounting evidence indicated that something horrible was happening at these camps; historical evidence shows that the Allied leadership knew by mid-1944 that mass killing was taking place at these camps and the general purpose of these mass killings, though there is debate about their knowledge of the true scale of the killing.
Overall, the Nazi SS managed to conceal the true nature of these camps from the general public through a series of misdirections and concealment strategies: most were nearby other "ordinary" forced labor camps, and thus, were depicted as simply an expansion of those camps. In addition, the camps were tightly guarded, and in generally out-of-the-way locations. People being sent to these camps were deceived through trickery (being promised "relocation" or jobs, or other inducements to travel there). However, there is considerable evidence that the general nature of these death camps was reasonably widespread amongst the German populace, and certainly the real purpose behind them was known to a large section of the collaborating pro-German governments.
Why was God blamed for the Holocaust?
This question has multiple aspects. My answer will ignore some of the history of attempts to explain or assign blame for the holocaust to better keep focus. Human free will is a huge topic on its own, as is the holocaust side of the question, which links to social psychology of violence, the problem of evil, etc.
People in all times and places have proved capable of appalling acts of inhumanity. As a primate possessing a three-part brain, man retains the capability of action completely unacceptable in society. It seems that within society at all times we have a small minority of psychopaths incapable of empathy and uninhibited by ethics or compassion. When sufficient of these rise to dominate a society, horrible events can ensue. Research suggests that psychopaths are half born, half made by environment. In a sense, they cannot help acting as they do. Nevertheless, society must operate as if every individual is responsible for one's own behavior, which seems to assume free will. Society must punish and blame violators, whether or not free will exists. This is cause and effect based on action, not requiring free will, but we understand it by asserting free will. Most people can be responsible and choose not to do unspeakable acts. Those who can not or do not may not have free will, but there is one law and one morality applied to all.
What did Churchill do about the Holocaust?
It seems incredible to think now, in this age of great communication, that 70 years ago the Prime Minister of one of the most powerful empires this world has ever known was unaware of what was going on throughout Europe. What could Churchill do anyway ? He himself was responsible for Bengali Holocaust, 6 million starved Indians, and was racist and for eugenics. Britain was fighting for its very survival. But I am of the opinion that Churchill knew very little about what was happening in, say, southern Poland, until the Russians relieved these terrible places. Yes, anti semitism was commonly known in Britain before the war, but what this had resulted in in terms of the mass of murders was a wholly different scale. It was one thing, if you'll pardon my comparison, to be horrid to the Jews, but to kill millions of them was something different. Britain did not go to war over the Jews, it went to war, eventually, to prevent the further expansion of Germany in Europe. The sad truth is that the Holocaust was seen as a by product of WW2, largely unseen until 1945, one might think a blind eye was turned. I think there wrere two blind eyes. When the Allies arrived at Belsen the shock was palpable & the horror never for a moment envisaged. but the fact remains even had Churchill known there was little he could have done more than he did, at least as Prime Minister from 1940. I'm not sure the conjecture of what would have happened had he been in power before that time is worth consideration.
Once a country's quota was met, Jews were turned away.
Why did the jews had to be killed?
The Jews were not killed for what they believed in, many of those murdered were never religious and many had lost their faith.
The benefits of studying this terrible topic is so this will never happen again. I know it's strange to be listening to Holocaust survivors talk about their journeys and what happened in the camps, but it's for the better good. ___ The main reason is that it is regarded as a key event in 20th century history.
What happened to the Jews in German occupied Europe during World War 2?
What happened is that they had problems. Hitler seized power in Germany through propaganda. He brainwashed people to hate Jews, and lied that they were the cause of Germany's economic problems (that were actually caused by World War I). Hitler killed and tortured the Jews in forced labor, or "Concentration" camps.
How many holocaust memorials are there?
I know of at least one, not counting the concentration camps that were turned into museums...
Why did Hitler persecute and kill other people besides Jews?
because they stood in his way of conquest on the Jews
Hitler believed that while Jews were the greatest problem towards forming a proper Aryan State (since they would "deviously" fight to overthrow it and "weaken" its constitution), there were numerous other races that would not have a place in this state, such as the Gypsies, the Communists, the Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
Were Jews put in cremation ovens alive to be killed?
No, that's a twisted and horrifying misconception. During the Holocaust, Jews and other victims were systematically murdered in gas chambers and their bodies were then cremated. It's important to remember and honor the millions of lives lost during this dark period in history, but let's stick to the facts and not spread misinformation.
Neither. He was raised a Catholic Pole (from Poland), later becoming a German citizen of varying belief centered around Christianity.
____
He was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, the son of Roman Catholic parents on 20 April 1889 and had a Roman Catholic upbringing. He was born an Austrian and acquired German citizenship in 1932. (There's no known Polish connection by the way).
What did they do at the concentration camps?
Well they would for starters instead of shaving their heads for their hair they ripped it from their scalps in clumps for things like dolls ect. They also took dead bodies skins and used them as book covers and such. They also took the ashes of the dead and put them into soaps and made the people use them. For some they would make people hold children in their arms while they shot the children. They would also spread typhoid fever in contaminated water or food and let them die or send them back to their ghettos so they could spread the disease(s).
All in all it was a very terrible time in history, and they probably did many more things than just this that could be 10x worse. Hope this helped you.
After WW1, Germany was a mess - at certain points, their money was literally not worth the paper it was printed on. That's a very scary thing to have happen, because you're never sure if you'll get food or clothing or medicine if you get sick. And when things are going that badly and people are scared, they often look for someone to blame or something to do, because then they are less scared. They also look for a leader, because they need someone to protect them.
Hitler was a very charismatic speaker, who filled the role of leader really well. And he picked the Jews as the people to blame, along with Communists, intellectuals, homosexuals, etc. He also gave the German people a vision of themselves as perfect and ideal, with a higher calling that could only be fulfilled if they got rid of undesireables. All those things are very, very inviting ideas if you are starving and frightened, and it worked.
It's also true that orthodox Jewish religious doctrine encourages Jews to think of themselves as "God's Chosen People" and a cut above the rest of us.
Put that together with certain behaviors that set them apart (distinctive clothing and hair styles among the Chasidim, for example) and it's not hard for unscrupulous people in power to take the heat off themselves by pointing at the "foreigners", the ones who aren't "real" Germans/English/Americans/whatever.
The same scapegoating is currently underway in the US, with Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans as the victims.
During WW2 it was Japanese-Americans, and in WW1 the German-Americans. We're not currently rounding up the Muslims or Arabs and putting them in concentration camps, the way we did the Japanese-Americans in WW2, but what will happen next year?
Comments1. Many of the points in the second contribution are not well informed and are based on inaccurate and irrelevant stereotypes and guesswork.
2. Germany was one of leading bastions of Reform Judaism, and by c.1880 most Jews were highly integrated in German society. Many made a point of avoiding conspicuous difference, and some went out of their way to be thoroughly German. (Only a minority were Othodox and they were certainly not Chassidic!) It has sometimes been said that the level of integration was a double edged thing and made it easy for the Nazis to talk about 'secret' Jews 'lurking' in all kinds of unlikely places close to the levers of power. In reality the Jews were in a 'no-win' situation.
3. Similarly, most German Jews downplayed or simply didn't talk about being 'God's chosen people'. (Incidentally, it's not unknown for born again Christians to talk in rather similar terms).
I think one must look for other answers to this question. Key points include these:
- German nationalists found the defeat of Germany in World War 1 unbearable - much more unbearable than the Treaty of Versailles - and retreated into denial of the defeat and a deep-seated yearning for a 're-run' of World War 1.
- The German nationalists therefore claimed that Germany had not be defeated on the battlefield but had been stabbed in the back by subversives on the home front.
- The more extreme Nationalists demonized "the Jews" as Communists and subversives and as part of a worldwide Bolshevik conspiracy.
- In the immediate aftermath of World War 1 and in the 1920s Germany was war weary and views 1-3 appealed only to a minority of the German electorate. From 1930 on, the devastating effects of the Great Depression caused immense frustration and anger, and changed the situation.
- The Nazi leadership did not, of course, publicize the Holocaust or its various other atrocities. Most ordinary Germans didn't want to know these things. The German population was not informed about the Holocaust and it certainly was not something that was discussed in public. The number of Germans actively involved was relatively small.
What actions lead to the holocaust?
Germany was coming out of a depression after the loss of World War 1 and the country was humiliated. Hitler rose to power by making the people feel like he could lead them out of this depression and make their country great. He used propaganda to promote his Nazi party, and then began to use Jewish people as a scapegoat for all the Countries problems, including the depression.
How did the Armenians recover from the genocide?
The Armenian Genocide has had a profound effect on the Armenian psyche.
Firstly, the Turkish government's failure to recognize the genocide and to strongly advocate against it has horribly affected Turkish-Armenian Relations, leading to bare recognition the countries. This failure on the part of many countries to recognize the Armenian genocide means that, unlike the Jews, they cannot take a small bit of solace in knowing that the people who masterminded the violence have paid. Most of the leaders like Mehmed Talaat, Ismail Enver, and Ahmed Djemal were illegally assassinated by Armenians after the war without any hearing of their crimes.
Secondly, the Armenian homeland was completely stripped of Armenians save for the small part in Russia/Soviet Union at the time. Entire villages were erased, others repopulated with people from central Anatolia, and most of the surviving villages were given new Turkish-language names. Many historic Armenian churches were destroyed completely. This full-scale overwriting of Armenian history on the land has had a profound effect on Armenians, giving rise to several irredentist movements in the past. In the present most Armenians agree that the land is now too Turk-ified and Kurdish to be Armenian land anymore, but some will search for any trace of where their family once came from.
Finally, it buttressed the Armenian nationalist desires. Unfortunately no great power was willing to support Armenian nationalism after Atatürk was able to reverse the Treaty of Sèvres and remove the Kurdish and Armenian states. This prevented Armenians from having their own country until 1991. This nationalism also manifested in the Wars of Nagorno-Karabakh, in which Armenians attacked sovereign Azerbaijani territory because a large percentage of ethnic Armenians live in certain enclave. Currently, the Nagorno-Karabakh region remains under illegal Armenian Occupation.
What company made the ovens Hitler used on the Jews?
J.A. Topf & Sohne (English: J.A. Topf & Sons) manufactured the crematoria used by the Nazis during WW2. The company went bankrupt in 1963 after years of war trials.
What did prisoners wear in the Concentration Camp during the Holocaust?
Guards- SS uniforms.
Prisoners- striped 'pyjama' prison clothes with a triangle in the upper arms indicating why they were there - for example, a red triangle for socialists, a yellow triangle for Jews and so on.
When were the concentration camps liberated?
Majdanek (in Lublin, Poland) was the first major camp to be liberated. On 22 July 1944, after a sudden advance, Soviet forces reached the camp. They found the gas chambers more or less intact. Some camps in Poland were dissolved by the Nazis as the Soviets approached. The liberation of most camps took place in the first few months of 1945.
The camp at Breendonk, near Antwerp in Belgium was liberated by the Allies early in September 1944. they weren't all liberated at once they all had different dates, but Auschwitz got liberated on January 27, 1945 by the Soviet Army.
How did Hitler attempt to accomplish genocide?
He murdered all non-aryans :(
My improved answer is:
Adolf Hitler murdered all non-German people such as the Jews and many more...
What helped allow the Holocaust to happen?
Back in those days the world was experiencing an economic hardship or depression. Germany,looking for a "change" in politics voted in to power a young charismatic leader who promised things would get better.Under the socialist party,they began to genocide anyone who was not a so called pure blood,,they primarily concentrated on the Jewish people.
The immediate cause of the Holocaust was the rise of the National Socialist (also known as Nazi) Party in Germany, but it had deep historical roots. Jews had been persecuted in Europe for over a thousand years prior to the Holocaust. The Christians of Europe were never happy with the refusal of Jews to convert to Christianity, and Christians tended to regard Jews as unwelcome interlopers in European countries.
