Learning About the Holocaust

“The purpose of Majdanek was an extermination camp, an extermination factory. So the purpose, the existence of it was to kill people.” Estelle Laughlin, Holocaust survivor

Hitler and the Nazis

In the quote above, Laughlin describes Majdanek: a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. Laughlin was sent to Majdanek when she was a child simply because she was Jewish. Millions of Jewish children and adults during World War II were forced into these camps to die. Laughlin survived to tell her story of being imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. The six million Jewish people who died during the Holocaust did not.

Adolf Hitler was the engineer behind these concentration camps. Hitler was the Chancellor of Germany. He ruled the country from 1933 until 1945 and led the National Socialist German Workers Party, otherwise known as the Nazi party. Nazis believed that Germany should be a strong and powerful state. They also believed that one group of white Europeans, known as Aryans, were superior to all other people on Earth. One group of people that Hitler and the Nazis singled out as being inferior were Jewish people. Hitler had big plans for Germany, but he had dire plans for the Jews. 

Jewish Persecution

Jewish people practice the religion of Judaism, one of the world’s oldest major religions. It predates Christianity by over 1,000 years. Jews have often been persecuted throughout history. For centuries, Jewish families were forced to live in only certain areas. They were only allowed to work in certain professions, and they were often turned into scapegoats, being wrongfully blamed for many social problems. In the Middle Ages, Jewish people were even expelled from entire countries in Europe, like England and France.

In the 17th century, Jewish people were allowed back into the countries that had driven them away hundreds of years earlier. This does not mean that Jews were accepted across Europe. They were still treated poorly, shunned, and blamed for many problems in society. And there were lots of problems in 1930s Germany. Millions of Germans were jobless. Many of the people that had jobs still couldn’t afford food or basic necessities. Of course, Jewish people did not cause Germany’s problems, but they became scapegoats once again. 

When Hitler came to power, he claimed to have the solutions to Germany’s problems. One of his solutions was to take land from other countries. He started by invading Poland in 1939. France and England declared war on Germany soon after. This marked the start of World War II. The United States entered the war two years later.

The Final Solution

Hitler saw the Jews as a major problem, not just in Germany but all across Europe. This problem, Hitler thought, needed a “Final Solution.” His Final Solution was a plan to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. As the Nazis invaded more countries, they captured and imprisoned Jews in concentration camps. Many prisoners were forced to perform hard labor. They were held in brutal, unsanitary conditions. They would often starve or die from disease. Countless Jewish men, women, and children were killed in these camps, often with poison gas. This organized process of capturing, imprisoning, torturing, and murdering millions of Jewish Europeans was known as the Holocaust.

By the mid-1940s, it was clear that Germany would lose the war. But Nazis continued to operate concentration camps until the very end of the war. Germany’s ultimate surrender came in 1945. It wasn’t until then that the remaining Holocaust survivors were liberated. By the end of the Holocaust, more than 10 million people had been killed, including Romani people (sometimes referred to as “Gypsies”), people with disabilities, and members of political and religious groups the Nazis hated. 

How We Remember Today

For someone who experienced the Holocaust, remembering these horrible events from their past can be very difficult. Yet that is just what many Holocaust survivors feel they must do. Famous author Elie Wiesel survived two Nazi concentration camps. After the war, he traveled the world to speak out against hatred and persecution. In 1986, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Wiesel encouraged people to speak out against oppression and mistreatment in his acceptance speech. “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented,” he said.  

In 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened to honor and remember the millions of Jewish people who were murdered during the Holocaust. The museum serves as a resource that accurately documents this dark chapter in history and teaches the public about the tragedy of the Holocaust. Remembering and understanding these episodes from the past are ways to help ensure they are never repeated.