The Holocaust?

Question

How would I express the Holoaust in the following eight stages of genocide?

1. Classification.
Who was the victim? Who was the perpetrator?

2. Symbolization.
How was the victim labeled?

3. Dehumanization.
How were the victims dehumanized?

4. Organization.
How was the genocide carried out?

5. Polarization.
What laws, propoganda, censorship, or hate speech was used against the victims?

6. Identification.
What happened to the victims?

7. Extermination.
What was the outcome or result of this act of genocide?

8. Denial.
How did the perpetrator attempt to hide the genocide?

I know the victims were the Jews, gypsies, mentally and physically handicapped, gays.
And the perpetrator was Adolf Hitler, and the Nazis.

Answer 1

1. Classification.
Perpetrator we know. I have included a few links to Nazi war criminals. We cannot pin this atrocity wholly on Hitler. You cannot forget people like Hermann Goering (head of the Gestapo, Minister of the Interior), Henrich Himmler (basically, advisor and the one who suggested the Final Solution, head of the SS), or Joseph Mengele (the "doctor" at Auschwitz). There are so many more.

Here is a list of the victims: 1) Jews, 2) Gypsies (Roma and Sinti), 3) Poles and Other Slavs, 4) Political Dissidents and Dissenting Clergy, 5) Persons with Physical or Mental Disabilities, 6) Jehovah's Witnesses, 7) Homosexuals

Notice that just about anyone the Nazi regime wanted dead could easily be fit into at least one of those classifications. There were more, I know, but I forgot whom. I know that the Russians were specifically targeted, for instance.

I have provided a link to the above, with a rendition of the patch they were forced to wear.

2. Symbolization.
1) Jew: yellow triange, 2) Gypsy: brown triangle (edit: or black.. I have some digging to do), 3) Gay: pink triangle, 4) Bible researcher: purple triangle, 5) Habitual criminal: green, 6) Political prisoner: red, 7) Antisocial individual: black, 8) Emigrant: blue

Notice that just about anyone could be fit into one of those categories. I do not know if the mentally and physically handicapped had a special triangle color.

3. Dehumanization.
---they were stripped of all identifying factors. Hair shaved, clothing removed and given uniforms, no civilized amentities that are associated with humanity.

The guards were selected with brutality in mind, on purpose.

The victims of the Camps were dehumanized in every way possible. Part of the dehumanizing tactics was to have the Camp victims, themselves, do the head shaving, pulling the victims out of the gas chambers after the gassing (having to untangle the bodies that were often stacked to the ceiling), do the actual cremating, rendering some of the bodies to extract the fat to make candles, etc. This furthered the dehumanization of the victims who were forced to actually DO these tasks.

The incoming victims were tended by current victims who had, basically, been so dehumanized that they, themselves, did not see the incoming victims as human. The incoming victims were treated, for the most part, like meat by the victims who had been selected for shaving duty, for instance. This began the serious dehumanization of the incoming victims and furthered the dehumanization of the victims made to do the task.

They were identified only by a number tattood on their forearms... further depersonalization.

4. Organization.
--With the Jews, first drove them into the Ghettos, started the breaking of them. When the Final Solution was declared, they (the victims) were exterminated via various means until the Camps were built and perfected. The Nazi killing machine was not perfected overnight. Treblinka was one of the earliest and most primative of the camps, for example.

One of the earliest ways of extermination, that did not work very well, was to put them in the back of a truck with the exhaust routed into the back, to kill the victims that way (this was one of the earliest attempts). They tried taking them out and shooting them, positioning them so they fell in rows into mass graves in the woods. Such methods did not work because 1) it was too slow, 2) the average Nazi's could not handle it themselves emotionally. It, as they say, messed with their minds, 3) body disposal became a problem.

5. Polarization.
---The Nazis had a widespread propaganda to slander the Jews and the mentally handicapped. They also had it for the Gyspies, however, I have only, myself, seen one of their propaganda spots about the Gypsies. I have seen many of the Nazi's actual propaganda films targetting the Jews and the mentally handicapped.

These films are horrid. One of the tricks they used was to intersperce picutures of charicatures of the worst "qualities" of the Jews with images of running black rats. I believe that was a primitive version of subliminal programming. Of course, they had the narration of how aweful were the Jews.

6. Identification.
---Most were lost to history. Records were kept in the Camps, however, they are not accurate. "Death Certificates" were made to excuse some of the murders... fake of course.

The Romani and Sinti were not identified at all... the majority of us were registered at the camps with only a checkmark because we could not write. That is why the number of Gypsies killed is so inaccurate. The "official estimate" was 200,000 to 500,000. The reality is somewhere well over a million.

The only identification IN the camps was the tattoo on the forearm. That furthered the depersonalization.

7. Extermination.
--The elimination of undesirables, be it races, those "unfit for life" (the mentally handicapped), and anyone who opposed the Nazi regime. The goal was to have a pure Aryan race of compliant citizens. The outcome was the obliteration of large numbers of, especially, Jews and Romani/Sinti. Families were decimated, populations were decimated, and a legacy of madness followed the Nazi movement.

8. Denial.
--They tried to hide the evidence unsuccessfully. They WERE digging up the mass graves (thousands of bodies) of those not burned before the ovens were built or in Camps that did not have sufficient ovens so they could burn the rotting remainders and were doing so (they had the victims do it, of course). They WERE going to kill all of the victims before the Camps were liberated, having the last living victims do the work until they had to finish it up because the Camps were mostly empty. They WERE trying because they knew that Germany was losing. They wanted to hide the evidence. They were not fast enough and the Tank units ploughed in during this attempted hiding of the evidence.

Answer 2

1. Victims: Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, PERPETRATOR: Nazi Germans, Adolf Hitler

2. Labeled by being forced to wear a yellow star letting everyone know they were Jews, "inferior" Propaganda films at ELEMENTARY schools lthat taught that Jews were bad.

3. Dehuminized in concentration camps and ghettos: No privacy, numbers tatooed on their arm, abuse, animal-like treatment, starvation

4. By a very orginized system of taking roll of all Jews and putting them in ghettos and concentration camps. From there they were gassed and slaughtered in a very systematic and organized way (in large gas chambers, with the corpses being burnt in ovens)

5. At first (before they were all shipped to camps) there were many laws. They couldn't attend the same schools as everyone else, tehy couldn't attend theatres, public parks, etc. See previous answers about propaganda (google "The Eternal Jew")

6. identification? What do you mean by that? See previious and next answers.


7. THe outcome was that some 6 million were slaughtered, I think 1/3 of Europe's Jewish Population

8. Denial: They tried to slaughter them all before the alies could get to the camp and see what it was all about. Some still insist that it never happened, it's Jewish Propoganda that everyone has "bought into"

Answer 3

YOU certainly would find all the answers if you would join the Yahoo! group Remem,ber_The_Holocaust where you would learn a lot. It has more than 50 pages of links to websites related to Holocaust, victims, etc. etc. Also it is like a town hall meeting regarding issues on human rights, other genocides such as Darfur, Armeniann, gypsies, etc etc handicapped people . euthanasia .. See : [e-mail]

Answer 4

1. a) Jews (semitic people) b) A. Hitler

2. a) In most camps, prisoners were made to wear identifying overalls with colored badges according to their categorisation: red triangles for Communists and other political prisoners, green triangles for common criminals, pink for homosexual men, purple for Jehovah's Witnesses, black for Gypsies and asocials, and yellow for Jews.

3. a)Organized events, music and punishment games:

A very important evening event in the camp, roll call, was more like a ceremonial event. Heads were to be without caps. Prisoners are counted and if the number is short an alarm is sound and the guards search for the missing prisoners. Throughout the entire search, the present and exhausted prisoners must wait, standing on two tired feet, in front of the barracks. Often the prisoners waited all night in the cold, damp night air.

Early in the morning and in the evening, the Kommandos march to music. Along with the music they all adored was synchronized marching. This event was enjoyed by the all the authorities in camp. While these men are marching with pride and honor, thousands of prisoners are suffering and dying. The prisoners had to adjust to this pleasure of the prison authorities which only made the prisoners angrier.

The Nazis really found much pleasure in watching prisoners suffer. The Jews and all other prisoners were forced to participate in the cruel activities, listen from afar or watch their fellow prisoners in agony. Nazis enjoyed releasing dogs to attack victims who cannot run free. Every morning a prisoner would attempt at hiding and skipping a hard day of work. The Nazis would find the prisoners and run after them hitting them with sticks and whips; like a game. The prisoners did not have a choice of participation.

4.) a)http://cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/ib_holocaust2001/Final_Solution/organization/final_solution_organization.htm

5.) a)http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/final.html

6.) a)
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/t4toc.html

7.) a)The following estimates provide a range of the number of victims:

An estimated 5 to 6 million Jews,[34] including 3 million Polish Jews
Estimates place total number of Polish deaths around 5.4mln [35]. 1.8 – 1.9 million Christian Poles and other (non-Jewish) Poles (estimate includes civilians killed as a result of Nazi aggression and occupation but does not include the military casualties of Nazi aggression or the victims of the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and of deportations to Central Asia and Siberia)[36]
200,000 – 800,000 Roma & Sinti (Gypsies)
200,000 – 300,000 people with disabilities
80,000-200,000 European Freemasons[37]
100,000 communists
10,000 – 25,000 homosexual men
2,500 – 5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses[38]

8. a) Destroying the Death Camps...

Gas chambers were used in the German Third Reich during the 1930s and 1940s as part of the so-called "public euthanasia program" aimed at eliminating physically and intellectually disabled people, and later the mentally ill. At that time, the preferred gas was carbon monoxide, often provided by the exhaust gas of cars or trucks or army tanks[citation needed].

Later, during the Holocaust, gas chambers were modified and enhanced to accept even larger groups as part of the German policy of genocide against Jews, and others. In January or February, 1940, 250 Roma children from Brno in the Buchenwald concentration camp were used for testing the Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide absorbed into various solid substrates).[5] On September 3, 1941, 600 Soviet POWs were gassed with Zyklon B at Auschwitz camp I; this was the first experiment with the gas at Auschwitz[citation needed].

Carbon monoxide was also used in large purpose-built gas chambers. The gas was provided by petrol engines (detailed in the Gerstein Report).[6] Nazi gas chambers in mobile vans and at least eight concentration camps (see also extermination camp) were used to kill several million people between 1941 and 1945. Some stationary gas chambers could kill 2,500 people at once. Numerous sources record the use of gas chambers in the Holocaust, including the direct testimony of Rudolf Höß, Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.[7]

The gas chambers were dismantled when Soviet troops got close, except at Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Majdanek. The gas chamber at Auschwitz I was reconstructed after the war as a memorial, but without a door in its doorway and without the wall that originally separated the gas chamber from a washroom. The door that had been added when the gas chamber was converted into an air raid shelter was left intact[citation needed].

Answer 5

Never forget.

http://www.yadvashem.org/

Answer 6

Genocide = **** happens.

just gotta take life as it comes. forget about the past and look toward teh future