Persecution of Jews: Difference between revisions

The persecution of Jews reached its most destructive form in the [[Racial policy of Nazi Germany|policies]] of [[Nazi Germany]], which made the destruction of Jews a high priority, starting with the [[Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany|persecution of Jews]] and culminating in the killing of approximately 6,000,000 Jews during [[World War II]] and [[the Holocaust]] from [[1941]] to [[1945]].<ref>[[Lucy Dawidowicz|Dawidowicz, Lucy]]. ''The War Against the Jews'', Bantam, 1986.p. 403</ref> Originally, the Nazis used [[death squad]]s, the [[Einsatzgruppen]], to conduct massive open-air killings of Jews who lived in the territories that they conquered. By 1942, the Nazi leadership decided to implement the [[Final Solution]], the [[genocide]] of the Jews of Europe, and increase the pace of the Holocaust by establishing [[extermination camp]]s for the specific purpose of killing Jews as well as other perceived undesirables such as [[German resistance to Nazism|people who openly opposed Hitler]].<ref>Manvell, Roger ''Goering'' New York:1972 Ballantine Books – War Leader Book #8 Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6724481.stm |title=Ukrainian mass Jewish grave found |publisher=BBC News |date=2007-06-05 |access-date=2011-11-22}}</ref>

This was an industrial method of [[genocide]]. Millions of Jews who had been confined to disease-ridden and massively overcrowded [[Nazi ghettos|ghettos]] were transported (often by [[Holocaust trains|train]]) to [[extermination camps|death camps]], where some of them were herded into a specific location (often a [[gas chamber]]), then they were either gassed or shot to death. Other prisoners simply committed suicide, unable to go on after witnessing the horrors of camp life.{{citation needed}} Afterward, their bodies were often searched for any valuable or useful materials, such as gold fillings, orwomens' hair was cut off, and then their remains were either buried in mass graves or burned. Others were [[Internment|interned]] in the camps and during their internment, they were given little food and disease was rampant.<ref name=Berenbaum103>Berenbaum, Michael. ''The World Must Know," United States Holocaust Museum'', 2006, p. 103.</ref>

Escapes from the camps were few, but they were not unknown. TheFor example, the few escapes from [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]] that succeeded were made possible by the [[Polish resistance movement in World War II|Polish underground]] (which operated inside the camp) and local people who lived outside.<ref name=Linn20>[[Ruth Linn|Linn, Ruth]]. ''Escaping Auschwitz. A culture of forgetting'', Cornell University Press, 2004, p. 20.</ref> In 1940, the Auschwitz commandant reportedclaimed that "the local population is fanatically Polish and … prepared to take any action against the hated [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] camp personnel. Every prisoner who managed to escape can count on help the moment he reaches the wall of the first Polish farmstead."<ref name=Swiebocki505>Swiebocki, Henryk. "Prisoner Escapes," in Berenbaum, Michael & Gutman, Yisrael (eds). ''Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp'', Indiana University Press and the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]], 1994, p. 505.</ref>