The Nature and Aims of the Holocaust (Shoah)
The Holocaust affected a substantial Jewish population, and for more than ten years, the Jewish people suffered under the oppression of Nazism. The death toll was approximately 6 million Jews whose existence was disliked by Nazi Germany. The main narrative promoted by the campaign of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, and others involved in Nazism is the so-called impurity of blood (Adelman et al., 2021). The motive for the extermination of the Jews was to leave the Aryan race as the dominant race, while the Jews were considered inferior people not worthy of life. Consequently, the causes of the Holocaust can be considered anti-Semitism or hatred of the Jews, associated with beliefs about the impurity of the blood.
The Holocaust in Poland: Occupation and Annihilation
One country that was a territory of persecution and murder of Jews was Poland in 1939. After the conquest of the territories, Germany created isolated, centralized ghettos into which Jews from all the conquered and annexed territories were brought (Michman, 2019). Initially, Jews were imprisoned; later, they were given insignia (such as the armbands with a Star of David on them), and whole groups were regularly sent to death camps. Jewish communities were quickly exterminated regardless of the number of people living there. The death camps became the primary means of controlling and abusing Jews after their establishment in 1942 (Adelman et al., 2021). The time from entering the death camps to dying could be only a few hours, required to get people to the cells.
The death camps were sources of mass destruction where medical and pharmacological research was conducted on the Jewish population, after which the results were integrated into the war industry. In addition, gas poisoning was used against Jews to ascertain their mode of action and use them in warfare. Murders of Jews also took place outside the death camps; sometimes, police officers killed people right in the street.
Jewish ghettos became territories where populations were liquidated based on their breaches of discipline (Michman, 2019). Any excuse became a source of murder that was not controlled or regulated. Poland was the main area where the concentration of the genocide of the Jews was greatest. The consequence was a pronounced loss of population in general and long periods of reconstruction after the war.
The Holocaust in Belgium: Legal Oppression, Looting, and Deportation
Another country that Germany occupied was Belgium in 1940. After the invasion of Poland, many Jews fled to nearby countries, and Belgium was no exception. Therefore, after the German invasion of Belgium, its government began to approve laws against the Jews. At first, orders were passed for the mass dismissal of Jewish Belgian citizens from public office, after all others. The percentage of the underclass rose sharply, after which the German Nazis began to rapidly loot and burn the homes of Jews and their synagogues, using violence against the people in parallel (Adelman et al., 2021).
After the Final Solution document was adopted, the persecution of the Jews intensified manifold, and, like Poland, the Jews had to wear distinctive badges with a Star of David. From this point, many Jews began to be deported to concentration camps in Poland, but about 30,000 Jews were killed before they were even resettled (Adelman et al., 2021). The deportations often occurred under the auspices of jobs in other territories: Jewish ghettos were raided by police, and people were forcibly removed to filtration camps.
References
Adelman, J., Pollard, E., Rosenberg, C., & Tignor, R. (2021). Worlds together, worlds apart: A history of the world from the beginnings of humankind to the present. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton & Company.
Michman, D. (2019). Historiography on the Holocaust in Poland: An outsider’s view of its place within recent general developments in Holocaust historiography. In New Directions in the History of the Jews in the Polish Lands. Academic Studies Press (pp. 384-401).