Remembering the Holocaust

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.