THE 20th CENTURY HOLOCAUST

Article written by Miracle Eze. Read below…

The Holocaust was the greatest genocide of the 20^th century; it was a genocide in which approximately 11 million people out of which six million were Jews were killed by the Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Regime and its Collaborators.

Since the Great Holocaust, there have been solemn questions arising on what prompted Adolph Hitler’s act. While some have asked what the Jews did to him others have pondered on the reasons for such heinous animosity held by Hitler against the Jews. In the course of this piece I shall be revealing some exceptional narratives on the reasons for Hitler's Actions.

While going through Adolph Hitler's Autobiographical book “Mein Kampf”,

I discovered that one of the reasons for the obsessive resentment Adolph Hitler held against the Jews was the death of his mother. His mother died in 1907 from a very painfully from breast cancer. Thus, Hitler began hating the Jews because a Jewish doctor called Eduard Bloch unsuccessfully treated his mother Klara. According to historian and journalist Dr Joachim Riecker “Adolf Hitler loved only two things in his life: his mother and the German Reich”. Note that “German Reich”, was the official name for the German nation state from 1871 to 1943.

Again was the fact that Adolph Hitler believed that the Jews were responsible for the collapse of the German economy. This was obviously because, half of German private banks, were Jewish owned, the stock exchange were dominated by Jewish stockbrokers.

However, Hitler’s core hatred lies at the defeat of Germany in WW1. Hitler blamed the Jews for defeat of the country, the collapse of the monarchy and the ruination of millions. Hitler believed that the Jews were responsible for all of the problems and evils of the world, particularly democracy, Communism, and internationalism. According to Hitler in his book “Mein Kampf” the Jews were the German nation's true enemy, and as such, they were not a race, but an anti-race.

In mid September 1941 Hitler ordered the beginning of mass deportations of the Jews from Germany to ghettos in Eastern Europe.  Hitler spoke at various occasions openly about the annihilation of the Jews in Europe.  In Germany concentration camps were set up after 1933 to detain without legal procedure Jews, Communists, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others.

During World War II extermination, or death camps were established for the sole purpose of killing Jewish men, women, and children. In the most notorious camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and Majdanek in Poland, Buchenwald and Dachau in Germany - more than 6 million people, mostly Jews and Poles, were killed in gas chambers. Millions of others were also interned during the war, and a large proportion died of gross mistreatment, malnutrition, and disease.

The Holocaust represents 11 million lives that abruptly ended the extermination of people not for who they were but for what they were.    

Miracle Ifeanyi Eze is a graduate from the department of History and International Relations, Ebonyi State University. He is also the chief editor, Global Diplomats’ forum, Nigerian chapter. For more enquiries you can email mimzyeze@gmail.com .

Read other articles by Miracle Eze 'here'