The Holocaust was the systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies. It began in 1933 with the rise of the Nazis in Germany and ended in 1945. Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I and the economic struggles of the 1920s. Once in power, the Nazis passed laws discriminating against Jews and excluding them from society. After invading Poland in 1939, the Nazis confined Jews to ghettos and later began mass deportations of Jews to concentration and extermination camps, where most were killed in gas chambers or by other means. By the end of World War II, two-thirds of European Jews had been killed in the Holocaust.

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History of Holocaust
Introduction
The argument that man is a social being is debatable. Living together still renders a
challenge. Human dignity is violated in the name of having superior race and ethnicity. Many
abuses and atrocities are committed in the name of expanding or showing the superiority of a
group. The big question and challenge that still remains is that can human live together and
respect each other rights? Today, we can really talk about a country that is peaceful even the
world greatest democratic countries, USA. Many human rights are abused. Most groups
believe that their problems could be solved by eliminating the other groups, to prevent such,
understanding the history of the holocaust can help in avoiding genocide in the future.
This paper seeks to explore what had happened in Germany during the holocaust and
how it came to an end. In addition, the research seeks to recommend some practical steps that
can be used to stop or handle cases of another “holocaust” in the future as most countries are
tumult.
Epistemology of Holocaust
Holocaust is a word derived from the Greek word “holokauston”. According to
Berenbaum (2017) and History.com (2009) that the Greek word is a translation of the
Hebrew word Olah meaning “a brunt sacrifice offered whole to God.” This argument further
holds that choose of word came because the bodies of victims of Nazi were wholly consumed
in cremation and open fire. Berenbaum (2017) and Findly and Rothney (2002) described
holocaust in this context, as the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men,
women and children and others which History.com (2009) that others were Gypsies and
homosexuals by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the World War II. The German
referred to the holocaust as “the final solution to the Jewish question”.
Background to Holocaust

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Housden (2007) argued that before Hitler assumed power that there were less than
one percent of the German population and the German Jews were well educated, respectable
citizens and worked in most professional fields such as banking, medicine, and law. The
German Jews were at that time accorded equal legal rights by the constitutions of the German
Empire and the Weimar Republic despite the equal rights but the anti-Jewish feelings made it
impossible for the Jewish to occupy traditionally elite Institutions like the Prussian Civil
Service or Officer Crops. The stigmatation of the Jewish people was not Halter’s idea.
According to History.com (2009) that before holocaust there were evident of hostility. For
instance, Martin Luther founder of the Protestants churches what can be termed to be hate
speech then followed by the pagans in German because of their Christian heritage.
History.com (2009) noted that the root of Hitter’s anti-Semitism was unclear. It can
be traced that Hitler blamed the Jews counterpart for the country’s defeat in 1918. After the
war, Hitler joined the National German Worker’s party, which later became the National
Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP), known to English Speakers as the Nazis. Welch
(1994) noted that anti-Semitism was propagated through educational system. Press and a
movie titled “Der ewige Jude (“The Eternal/Wandering Jew”) that gave the image that the
Jewish people were not human beings but pets which had to be exterminated since that the
killing of Jesus was not a crime but a necessity (Welch 1994; p.143). This are ways in which
almost countries have used to achieve their genocide of promoting superior race.
The origin of the anti-Semitism can be further be rooted in 1923, when Hitler was
imprisoned for treason in the Beer Hall Putsch (History.com. 2009). It is followed that while
imprisoned, Hitler wrote a memoir and propaganda tract “Mein Kampf” (my struggle), in
which he predicted a general European war that would result in “the extermination of the
Jewish race in Germany” but Welch (1994) argued that exterminated were not the Jews but
“unhealthy” Germans (p.137) through sterilization of people suffering from inherited

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diseases. According to Rothney and Findley (2002) that the book “Mein Kampf” lead to
Hitler successful objectives. Furthermore, Hitler was a “social Darwinist” who believed that
among species there is a survival of the fittest. Hitter was obsessed by the superiority of the
“pure” German race, which he called “Ayan”, and with the need for “Lebensraum”, or a
living space in the east for that race to expand especially from the Soviet Union that were
regarded as the “racially inferior race. After his released from prison, Hitter took advantage
of the weakness of his rivals and promoted his party status. He was named chancellor of the
Germans on January 20, 1933 and after the death of president Paul van Hindenburg, Hitter
anointed himself as “fuhrer”, becoming Germany’s supreme ruler. After the Nazi electoral
victory in March 1933, the Nazi group went on a rampage, assaulting Jews, damaging their
properties and demanding a” Jewish free” economy (Welch 1994, p. 137). The official move
against the Jewish people was the announcement made by Hitler on September 1935 on
further batch of anti-Jewish legislation (appendix 1.0 from Modern European History P.138-
141). Holoculst can be said to have started after German invasion of the Soviet Union in
June 1941 and then implemented on 20 January1942 after the Wannsee Conference (Welch,
1994). The war could have been aviated as U.S. War Department refused to divert planes
conducting raids near Auschwitz to bomb the gas chambers and the railway lines leading to
the death camp (Keylor, 2010, p. 177).
At the end, twenty-two top Nazi leaders in the city of Bavarian city of Nuremberg
from November 1945 to September 1946 were some sentenced to ten years imprisonment and
some to death but three who were saved contributed a new term to vocabulary of
international law: “crimes against humanity”.
Victims of Holocaust

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Perpetrators were the German Nazi Party under the rule of Hitler. The Nazi’s victimized the
German Jews, disabled Germans, Slavic people, religious dissidents, i.e., the Jehovah
Witnesses, Gypsies (Roma, Sinti and Lalleri), homosexuals, soviet war prisoners and German
political opponents, clergy, non-secular people and partisans among other group (Gilbert,
1986).

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References
Findley, C., V., & Rothney, J., A., M. (2002). Twentieth-Century World. (5th ed.). New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company.
History.com. (2009). The Holocaust. A+E Network. Retrieved on October 2nd 2017 from
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-holocaust
Keylor, W. R. (2010). The twentieth century world and beyond: An international history since 1900.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Welch, D. (1999). Modern European history: 1871-2000 : a documentary reader. London: Routledge.
Brenbaum, M. (2017). Holocaust. Retrieved on October, 2nd 2017 from
https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-holocaust
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007653
https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007691
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/16691969
https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust
http://www.nptel.ac.in/courses/122104018/node108.html