These days, it is often that one hears and reads about the tragedy that happened to the Jewish people during the Second World War, the Holocaust. Even before the war in the 1930s, Germany introduced several laws that limited rights of Jewish people, forbidding them from going to school and living outside particular remote areas. In today’s world, the subject of tolerance and respect for the individual, regardless of the nation, should be at the forefront and on an equal footing with other socially essential issues. This essay covers the Holocaust in terms of its causes and consequences.
Wars and conflicts based on religious, economic, racial, and other reasons were happening throughout the history of the human race. Such conflicts were followed by new theories and ideologies that were supposed to uphold one of the side’s aggressive views. Since the forties of the twentieth century, another such theory, called the Holocaust, came into use in the context of the mass extermination of Jews in Europe by the Nazis. It is worth noting that there is no fundamental difference between the Holocaust and genocide. The only difference is that the first one is a legislatively approved and ideologically supported plan of destruction of the whole ethnos.
Anti-Semitism and the history of dislike for the Jews have deep roots: the Jews were persecuted starting from Egyptian pharaohs, the rulers of the Roman Empire, the monarchies of Europe, with equal force experienced humiliation from both Muslims and Christians, in ancient times, in the Middle Ages and new history. The source of this hatred was religious, cultural, and national differences. According to ideas of anti-Semitism, Jews were considered to be biologically and genetically damaging. Therefore, in the opinion of the Nazis, they posed a danger to the purity of the nation.
From the moment the Nazis came to power in 1933 until the collapse of the regime in May 1945, according to various estimates of historians, about six million Jews were killed. There is no exact number and namesake list of victims. Moreover, by the end of the war, the Nazis destroyed even the traces of death camps – there is evidence of the destruction of already buried human remains before the arrival of the Soviet troops. All property seized during the Holocaust – from children’s toys to jewelry and real estate – was immediately distributed within the country. As promised, Hitler improved the lives of German citizens of the Aryan race at the expense of the Jews.
A large number of works of art are dedicated to the Holocaust, and they usually show two main trends among Jews: resistance to Nazi violence or total submission. In almost every ghetto, the underground functioned, and uprisings broke out regularly. However, as history has shown, there are survivors among the prisoners, and these are people who have mostly behaved obediently and have not shown resistance to the Nazis.
In the modern world, the Holocaust scenario does not seem so realistic. After the terrible experience of the Second World War, modern people have become more tolerant to each other. It is the education of tolerance that helps prevent the Holocaust, genocide, and xenophobia. The formation of a person as a person begins from childhood, so from a young age, it is necessary to show and tell the child that all people, regardless of skin color and nationality, have the same rights as each of us.