What Is The Cause Of The Holocaust?

There seems to be many things in this world that are screwed up; the Holocaust was one of them. In 1942 Hitler’s plan was in full force (Rosenberg 16). Jewish people could not go to restaurants, theaters, or swimming pools. Their stores were boycotted, and mobs who looted the stores went unpunished (Rosenberg 4). The people that were put in the ghettos had curfews (Rosenburg 29). Many people tried to avoid capture (Rosenberg 31). However, thousands of Jews were shipped from the ghettos to concentration camps every day where they were put to death (Rosenberg 8). I was one of those Jews. Today, November 9, 1938, many synagogues are being burnt down in Germany and Austria (Rosenberg 7). My father turned the radio off and cussed. I asked him,
“What we were going to do?” He said, “Son go get your mother and your little sister.” I went up and woke my mother and sister up. I said, “Mom, Dad and I heard terrible news on the radio this morning.” She said, “We’ll talk about it over dinner.” We had beef stew with vegetable soup while we discussed the issue at hand. My mother said, “Your grandpa said we can get out of the country, and move to the promised land (Rosenberg 28). But that promise wouldn’t come to fruition for a long, long time.
We heard a knock on the door, so my father went over and opened the door. As he was opening the door, the Gestapo filed in and knocked my father to the ground (Rosenberg 2). As I was fighting back, my mother hid my sister in our basement (Rosenberg 33). The Gestapo stuck a Mauser to my head and forced me to the ground. They restrained my father, mother, and I. The next day our transport took us to a heavily guarded prison, or at least what I thought was a prison. The other Jews in the transport told us that we were at Auschwitz (Rosenberg Glossary). When we got into Auschwitz we were branded with tattoos. The tattoo was blue and consisted of multiple numbers (Rogasky 93). The Nazis told us if we forgot the number we would be shot. Then, they examined us one by one. The people that they saw unfit would never be heard from again. They laid out what they considered were the rules. They told us that if one of us tried to get out they would kill all of us. We had blocks assigned to us. All my family and I got split up. The blocks slept five people a bed, and two thousand people a block (Rogasky 89). During the night a few people tried to escape, we heard gunshots that woke us up. The Nazis gathered my whole block up and started shooting. I hid under the dead bodies and stayed still. I was covered in blood, when I realized God was not going to help me there. Auschwitz was hell on Earth. The next day we had two rations of food. Those rations consisted of rotten food mixed with water (Rogasky 95). The days were going by and we were all getting malnourished. Eventually the Nazis thought that our productivity was poor (ushmm). Every day they would pick a block, and they would take all of the people in that block to the gas chambers (Rogasky 91). Many of the friends that I had made died that way. Occasionally, there would be children who would play games. One time the Nazis caught three kids playing. They took the kids and hung all of them. The kids just hung on the rope until they suffocated (Rogasky 93). Many people protested against the Nazis, and tried to fight back. Thousands died in the process of fighting back (Rogasky 101). There were many days where the Nazi doctors would use us as subjects for experiments. Those of us used never turned up again (Rogasky 94). There were days where many people gave up, so they would fling themselves into fences, and commit suicide. One day came where we were forced to march to the city Wodzislaw. Thousands of us died. If someone stopped, fell, or couldn’t continue, they would shoot them. Once we got to the city we were put on freight trains where many of us would die before we got to our destination. The camp I ended up being put in was Buchenwald.
Once we were there for a while we were being put in death marches. The Americans were advancing at the time, so the cowards tried to kill us off the quickest and most efficient way possible. They killed a third of us before we took over the camp. That day was April 11, 1945. There wasn’t much fighting because the Nazis were weakened. They ran off like the cowards they were. After spending nearly seven years in Auschwitz and a little time in Buchenwald, I was twenty-two at that time. The Americans took us in, and gave us food and water. They offered me the chance to go to America, and I took it. I haven’t seen my mother, father, and sister ever since the Holocaust.
I was in the heaviest populated death camp ever known to man. The death toll there was one million Jews (ushmm). There were six major death camps; they were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka (Louis Bulow). The camps were places where Nazis carried out their sick cause (ushmm). The Nazis murdered three million Jews in those killing centers in the matter of a few years (ushmm).
In 1933 nine million Jews lived in the twenty-one countries of Europe that would be occupied by Nazi Germany during WWII (Louis Bulow). Millions of us died in the ghettos and concentration camps due to forced labor, starvation, exposure, brutality, disease, and executions (Louis Bulow). The SS authorities continued to malnourish and mistreat prisoners incarcerated in the concentration camps (Louis Bulow). It was estimated that in each camp 6,000 Jews were gassed a day (ushmm).
The concentration camps became sites where the SS authorities could kill targeted groups of perceived enemies of Nazi Germany (ushmm). I don’t blame the Nazis for what they did. I blame Adolf Hitler, because he brainwashed and manipulated all of the people in his country at that time. He even had his henchmen kill thousands of handicapped Germans by lethal injections in the 1930s (Louis Bulow). Many people tried to escape on transports and ended up getting killed (Rogasky
108).
I am one of the last of my generation left. I told you my story because I want to make sure nothing like the horrors of the Holocaust ever happen again. I lost many people dear to me. I even lost my mother, father, and little sister. The Holocaust was one of the worst atrocities committed in the history of humankind.