The Holocaust: What do we know about it?

The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler became more powerful in Germany. In Greek, “Holocaust” also known as “holokauston” in which it means “sacrifice by fire”. This term used by the Nazi to persecute Jewish people during that time. According to excerpt from the Nazi’s sacred texts, Mein Kampf or My Struggle, Jewish was acknowledged to be liars and cunning. They turned out to be ‘leaches’ among Germans by taking the credits while others were doing their works. So, the Nazi, "Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei”, (National Socialist German Worker’s Party), decided to do this genocide. Approximately, around 11 million of people died during this “Final Solution”. More or less, 6 million of them were Jewish and 1.1 million were children and also two-third of all Jews living in Europe.

There were steps when starting this Holocaust. At first, the Nazi announced to boycott all Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933. Then, they introduced Nuremberg Laws on September 15, 1935. The laws made Jews to rule out from the public eyes. The Nuremberg Laws also stripped the German Jews off from their citizenship and prohibited the marriages among Jews and Germans. During November 9-10, 1938, Nazi started to pogrom Jews in Austria and Germany. It has been termed by, “Kristallnacht” (Night of Broken Glass). The Nazi was using violence like physical attacked on Jews, breaking windows and looting of the stores. About 30 000 of Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camp.

Yellow Star of David was introduced after World War II so that the Jews can be easily recognised by the Nazi. The Nazi also made Jews to live in ghettos among themselves. Ghettos were a place in big cities where there were small apartments and the Jews need to move in there and shared it with other families. They also got curfew in which when “open”, they can leave the area, and when it “closed”, that means they were not allowed to leave the area. Later on, when the Nazi wanted to “liquidate” or kill them, they will put them on train.

During this dictator era, there were plenty of Nazi’s camps like concentration camps, extermination camps, labour camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and transit camps. In there, either the victims will be doing physical labour or being torture through medical experiments unwillingly. Death was common and frequent to be happened inside the camps. So, these are the holocaust all about.