FINAL PROJECT

(in order to be helpful)

By Kim S.,Kelsey M.,

Fallon W. and Michelle S.

Period 3

One human right the Nazi’s brutally disobeyed was no one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. Prisoners were forced to death marches to other concentration sites. Death marches were when the prisoners were ordered to run as fast as they could, if they slowed down or fell, they were immediately shot by the Nazi guards running along side. Another example of this is the gas chambers. The gas chambers used a chemical called Zyklon-B. There was a small hole in the chamber were the chemical was thrown in. In the gas chambers people were thrown into and suffocated. Gas chambers were popular to use because it only took 5-15 minutes for the prisoners to die. The ghettos were just as bad as the gas chambers; they were holding places where the police could keep a better watch over them were almost four hundred fifty thousand Jews were crammed where only about one hundred forty five thousand people lived before. Disease spread like wildfire in these places but illness was the least of their worries, hunger was the main issue. The only way to get food was from the Nazi’s who only gave them things such as bread and potatoes.

The picture above shows the ghettos that the Jews were crammed into. You can see that they weren't in the greatest conditions, there is soot collecting on the side of the road. The picture shows that there were guards everywhere. In this one picture there are three guards. The ghettos were kept everyone very isolated from the world.

Another human right that was greatly disobeyed was everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The Jews were deprived from their freedom simply because they were Jewish. Hitler showed hatred to these people because he believed they were the reason for Germany’s weaknesses and hardships. Other people that he disliked were political minorities, the communists, homosexuals, gypsies, and other groups.

The picture above shows the hatred towards the Jews. This is a Jewish grave site, but if you look towards the back of a grave, someone drew a the Nazi symbol, a swastika. Showing disrespect to the Jewish people.

The Holocaust was a scary, depressing, and unforgettable time in Europe and all around the world, late 1938. Nazi Germany was the cause of the Holocaust and the ones running the show. They set up concentration camps all around Germany where they could torture Jews, homosexuals, criminals, politicians, and others of a different belief or those who opposed of Hitler. Thank goodness not everyone was brainwashed into the idea of trying to destroy a human race. Britain, the United States, The Soviet Union, and France tried to take down Hitler before all of Europe was suffering from the consequences. In the meantime, it was mainly the Jewish race that did the suffering. Germany government agreed to this act because Hitler was the only person making sense since World War One and the Treaty of Versailles, therefore the people followed. Other countries and nations were not aware of the Holocaust and what Hitler was doing inside Germany. As a result, the League of Nations, or the government trying to keep peace could not do anything about it. Unfortunately, for those who did know they could not do anything about it. It was an act of National Sovereignty meaning that Germans could do whatever they wanted as long as it was in their own boarders. The only way the countries could stop this craziness was to invade Germany. While most countries were on their way to invasion many Jews were interrogated and imprisoned like the Germans were later on after the Nuremberg Trails. However, more than half were put into concentration camps where they were starved to death or worked to death. The sick ideas of one man cost us about eleven million lives and if we had not stopped it, it could have been millions more.

Adolf Hitler is shown above wearing the symbol of the Nazi’s, the swastika, as an armband. The idea of the swastika was taken from the Native Americans to represent Nazi’s symbolism. It was suppose to symbolize a person running which showed Germany’s progress to take over Europe.

The Weimar Republic’s economic and political collapse enabled Adolf Hitler to come to power and eventually become chancellor. Once in power, Hitler suspended the Weimar Republic. He started to use his ideas from his book Mein Kampf, or My Struggle. Hitler wrote in a section where he discusses his coming to power: "At this time endless plans chased one another through my head.” He was very angered by the results of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany was forced to pay reparations, the army was reduced to one hundred thousand men with no tanks supplied, the navy was allowed only six ships and no submarines, and the air force was destroyed. Hitler began to blame the Jews, political minorities, the communists, homosexuals, gypsies, and other groups for economic hardships, the weakness of Germany and most of all the treaty of Versailles. He defined these people as “sub-humans”, or regarded as not being fully human.

The picture above shows the numbers imprinted on Nazi-captured prisoners. Once the prisoners received this number, they were no longer a human being, just referred to as a number.

The Holocaust took place during World War II from about 1938 until 1945. On November 9th and 10th, 1938 many Jewish people died in Germany. This was called Kristallnacht or in English “Night of Broken Glass”. The losses that occurred on these nights were only the start of many more deaths to come. The idea of purging Nazi Germany of all Jews and minorities is referred to it as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. Although the Holocaust started in 1938 the idea was brought up 1942 and was the way of planning for the Holocaust. During the Holocaust about six million Jews died. But in total there were about nine to eleven million victims. Other groups that were ostracized were Romanians, disabled people, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, politicals, Serbs, Poles, Jehovah Witnesses and more.

This is a picture of Kristallnacht when the state of Germany organized the Nazi’s to go through Germany and beat, tortured, and killed all of the Jews. This was also known as the “Night of the Broken Glass”. This happened on November 9-10 1938 and it was the beginning of the Holocaust in Germany.

-By Kim S., Kelsey M,,Fallon W, and Michelle S, Period 3