Today, I think it’ll be best to write about a more serious
topic. It’s understandable that many overlook this post due to the topic.
However, I feel as if this is a topic that must be discussed
amongst everyone.
To begin we
should understand what the Holocaust is and when it took place. The Holocaust
is a Genocide which took place in various places in Europe.
The question I want to
answer today is not exactly what the Genocide is, but what/why should we
remember this Genocide? To me the things we must understand about this Genocide
is how it came to be and its aftermath.
As a student of Genocide I
have come to understand that there’s more to a Genocide then killing (even
though that does end up one of the final results). There are a few things that
must happen in order for a Genocide to occur. First of all there must be
4 psychological preconditions, which are narcissism, greed, fear and
humiliation.
NARCISSISM
Narcissism ties itself with
anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism isn't something that started more in the recent years. It
is something that has been developing for centuries all over the
world. What is Anti-Semitism? It is hostility to or prejudice
against Jews. It is something that develop long ago when people believed
that the Jewish had killed Jesus. Along with that, the Germans believed they were
the better race, this made them have large sense
of pride.
GREED
In 1923, the entire world went
through a depression. Inflation was everywhere; in Germany it was worse. The
Germans were experiencing hyper-inflation, it went to the
point where they were changing decimal placings on bills and they ended up
burning money because it was worthless. On the other many others weren't being
as effected, such as some of the Jewish race. This led the Germans to
grow their hatred towards the Jewish. I believe this led them to have
the thought "Since we [the German] are better than them [the Jewish], they
do not deserve to live better than us".
FEAR
There
is the story that has been going around about the elders of Zion. Which causes
fear amongst the Germans. I personally don’t feel much connection with this one as a precondition towards the genocide.
However, I do believe
that the fear of "something" happening is what helped drive the Germans to
separate themselves more from the Jewish population.
HUMILIATION
This connects completely with the loss of World War 1. Throughout the war
the Germans were fooled into believing they were winning (this made them have a
huge loss of self-pride). The German population lost faith in the government. This and hyper-inflation led to desperation and led to the
rise of Adolf Hitler.
I fell as if it’s important for one to know that the genocide was
not just the massive amount of killing. There were many things that had to
happen in order for one to kill so many people. In total there are a
total of 10 stages. However, I'm only going to focus on 6 of these stages.
SYMBOLIZATION
To have a Genocide there must be division amongst the two groups.
The symbolization represents the start of classification and the division of the "us" and "them"
groups. One of the things
that Hitler did when he was elected was to make the Jewish population
identifiable through paper, then he moved to making it something more noticeable. Even amongst the concentration camps there was still a division due to the different
classes represented through the different types of starts that was on
their clothes.
DEHUMANIZATION
To me I think a good way to represent this is through their speech
that they use. Many of the Nazis called thee Jewish "vermin", "rodents" and other things which
represented they weren't human. An accurate representation of this is the book MAUS. The novel
presents the Jewish race as rats, and many believe rats are disgusting.
PREPARATION
To further separate the two groups the Nazis had put the Jewish population into ghettos. In some
ghettos they sealed it off by surrounding in a wall. This made it easier for the Nazis to put them into concentration
camp and later on extermination camps.
PERSECUTION
This part is something I find interesting. The Nazis has taken barely
any time to decide that the entire population of the Jewish people were to be exterminated.
They believed that since the rest of the world did not want to deal with the
problem of the Jewish they, themselves, were to deal with it. They believed
that the only solution to this problem was to get rid of them all. They believed it was their duty because the rest of the world
did not want to deal with them.
EXTERMINATION
This part is something many know about. The Germans had to try to
figure out a way to kill all these people without chaos. They had experimented various ways to kill them without wasting too much money on
bullets and without making an uproar. They first experimented on the people who were deemed
not proper to the German race. Then once they discovered the perfect way to kill
a massive amount of people they implemented it into the concentration
camps, making them also extermination camps. They soon made other camps specifically for the
killing of all these people. In the end they killed millions of Jewish people.
DENIAL
I believe that the only real sense of the denial of this crime is the act of
suicide on Hitler's part. I feel as if this crime has not been fully atoned
for because Hitler, himself, has not paid for his crimes. It is easy for all of
us to remember this crime however, if the person who administered all of this had yet to atone for
this, then this event will never be truly recognized. Due to the fact that Hitler committed suicide, I believe the Genocide has not been fully dealt with.
WHY
SHOULD WE REMEMBER ALL OF THIS?
I am a full believer in the fact that knowledge is
key. Knowledge leads us to understanding and an understanding of something could help improve
the future. I feel as if it’s important to understand how this happened so none of us
repeat it. But not only
that, we must be able to point out these things amongst what is happening today in our society.
We
should also know that there is still this hatred amongst the population against
the Jewish population. There is a memorial in Poland that was defaced before. This is not over, we must do whatever it takes to not repeat ourselves.
Also,
I believe if we do not have a firm understanding of this, we are doomed to
repeat ourselves. As a student of Genocide, I already see signs of a
genocide that may be able to occur inside of America.
There's
so much more to this and everyone must understand this so we can prevent anything from happening, ever again.
Over the course if my school year, my Genocide class has learned various
different ways perpetrators try to eliminate their targets. One of the most
common things we noticed was the use of rape as a weapon. I believe that rape
as a weapon in Genocide is one of the cruelest forms of taking down a target
group. Why do I believe this? Simply because unlike where killing someone, the
pain of rape is forever left on the victim. Death is peaceful compared to rape.
Death happens in one moment. However, rape is something that will effect a
victim for the rest of their life. Rape could leave permanent scars on the
person mentally and in many cases force the victim to be shunned out of their
community. 
