Summary: Ten Step Of Genocide

Classification is the first step of genocide. People will begin to “...distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality: German and Jew...” (Genocide Watch- Ten Steps of Genocide). Hitler knew what his followers would look like: mainly blonde hair and blue eyes. They became to be known as the Aryan race. The Holocaust is very similar to the racial segregation of African Americans in the late 1800s because the leaders would separate and classify who is limited and who gets privileges. In this case, the Germans would represent the white people and the Jews would represent the colored.

When the Jews were being classified as a Jew and not a German citizen, it was around 1934 or 1935 when Hitler announced himself as Fuhrer or leader. The Nazi Party now had authority to begin changing the laws. Jews were to recover their German registration with the new passports and the yellow Star of David patch which symbolized
them as non-Aryans. These were the 1935 Nuremberg Laws which restricted Jewish privileges. Jews were now banned from employment, given a curfew, they were forced to go to new schools, facilities, and non-Aryans were not permitted to marry an Aryan. This was all for the sake of saving German honor, dignity, and blood.

German children were separated from the Jewish children and brought to new schools where they learned to “Hail Hitler” and to support the Nazi propaganda. Also, the stronger German boys were trained to become Nazi soldiers.

The Nazis put up posters and delivered speeches at rallies to gain assistance of the German citizens in spreading anti-Semitism.
Rallies and other symbolic acts performed by the Nazis showed party strength, intimidating the Jews and instilling the outright fear mentioned earlier. An example of the propaganda was saying that the Jews worked for the Allied forces secretly, making German citizens angry and they accepted the fact that the Jews were to be tortured and eradicated because they started WWI according to Hitler. The Nazis created a scapegoat out of the Jews, making them look like the enemy. During the Nazi rallies which took place from 1933-1938, the majority of propaganda was used in the Holocaust.

The bestial degradation of the Jews was the next step leading to the genocide of the Final Solution. Now, they were being stripped of their humanity and being treated like animals. The German people hated, discriminated, and dehumanized the Jewish people, resulting in widespread Jewish
persecution.

One of the important events of 1938 was the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht that occurred on the night of November 9. All across the nation, Nazis destroyed, looted, vandalized stores and synagogues. 300,000 Jews were separated from their families and sent to camps and ghettos like the ones at Dachau and Buchenwald. This was the first outburst of Jewish violence during the Holocaust. Jews were labeled as racially inferior and were ruthlessly abused in these camps making life almost unbearable.

The camps and ghettos were capable of being built during the time of the Nuremberg rallies. This is also a step of genocide called preparation & organization. Jews were easier to transport and separate because they had already registered. At this point, all the propaganda used to gain support of the German citizens would take act and reveal its unpleasant outcome which was one of the most catastrophic events to ever occur. All the planning and organization put into the Holocaust made it a systematic annihilation.

The ghettos were bigger cities that the Jews were forced to live in with other families. They were forced out of their homes soon after Kristallnacht. The ghettos were filled with small apartments that Jewish families were forced to live in together. They were walled and heavily guarded by Nazi soldiers. If anyone would attempt to escape, they were shot or beaten on the spot. Basically, any Jew that was living in a ghetto was at their doom.

A few ghettos were located in Bialystok, Kovno, Lodz, Minsk, Riga, Vilna, and the largest being Warsaw which reached a population of about 500,000. Most ghettos had a Jewish council called a Judenrat which would report any Nazi commands and set boundaries and rules among themselves.

The ghettos’ purpose was to round up and concentrate all the Jews in order to make it easier for transportation from camp to camp. From ghettos, thousands at a time would be put into dreadful boxcars or trains to be transported to concentration camps and death camps. Life in the boxcars was horrible. Some would die of thirst, hunger, and suffocation. Eventually when the Jews would arrive at the camps, life would get even more rough.

Any left over people in the ghettos were to be liquidated by the Nazis. When the Nazi soldiers had to liquidate a ghetto, they would just go around and kill. But one liquidation wasn’t successful, known as the Warsaw Uprising in 1943. Jewish resistance was able to hold themselves against the Nazi regime until finally being killed. This illustrates how desperate those Jews were to save their lives.

Life in concentration camps and extermination camps was horrendous for the Jews. They were forced to do exhausting labor for many months. Also the food was terrible and the prisoners were given small rations. Three people were assigned to a bunk and life was even more crammed and crowded in the camps. These camps were built for the stronger prisoners for the purpose of forced labor. Extermination camps were meant for the death and disposal of the weaker prisoners: children, elderly, ill, and disabled. Jews were instructed to unclothe and take showers but these were gas showers. The Jews would suffocate and the bodies were burned in ovens by the Nazis. “At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease” (Holocaust Death Camps). These atrocities committed by the Nazis became known as the Final Solution

The Final Solution was the final stage of the Jewish genocide. In time, the Allied forces were able to liberate the camps and survivors. They fought hard through German defenses and were able to liberate the Jews. Medical aid was also provided to recover some of the starving and injured prisoners. The rest of the survivors were placed in Displaced Person or DP Camps to heal and get reacquainted.

Many survivors had nowhere to go. They had no family to go to. They had no home to go to. They had no money to go anywhere. Most were just lost. “Survivors of the camps found it nearly impossible to return home, as in many cases they had lost their families and been denounced by their non-Jewish neighbors. As a result, the late 1940s saw an unprecedented number of refugees, POWs and other displaced populations moving across Europe… Increasing pressure on the Allied powers to create a homeland for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust would lead to a mandate for the creation of Israel in 1948” (Aftermath and Lasting Impact of the Holocaust).

“At the end of the war, between 50,000 and 100,000 Jewish survivors were living in three zones of occupation: American, British and Soviet. Within a year, that figure grew to about 200,000. The American zone of occupation contained more than 90 percent of the Jewish displaced persons (DPs). The Jewish DPs would not and could not return to their homes, which brought back such horrible memories and still held the threat of danger from anti-Semitic neighbors. Thus, they languished in DP camps until emigration could be arranged to Palestine, and later Israel, the United States, South America and other countries. The last DP camp closed in 1957” (An Introductory History of the Holocaust).

To conclude, the commitment of genocide by the Nazis was only made possible through propaganda. The Nazi Party was an evil political party that perpetrated these cruel acts because they were simply angry. Political views such as the start of WWI, Treaty of Versailles, and Jewish occupation uplifted all the hate and anger. The Nuremberg Trials brought the Nazi crimes to the public and they were executed for their convictions. But that can never be enough to make up for the death of 6.3 million Jews. The Nazis were capable of spreading the ideology of anti-Semitism through advertising and hosting rallies. Propaganda was cleverly used by the Nazis in order to lead to the Final Solution. This piece of history was very inhumane and wicked, making the Holocaust very important to learn from and ultimately realize that hate is something that shouldn’t be initiated against anyone, anywhere in the world just because of their race or identity. “Just as the nineteenth century was the century of the movement to abolish slavery, let us make the twenty-first the century when we end genocide. Genocide, like slavery, is caused by human will. Human will – including our will – can end it…” -Gregory H. Stanton, Genocide Watch