Nazi Germany and The Holocaust

The Colossal Effects of Concentration Camps

                The Nazis were irrational about the acts and crimes they committed.  They killed millions of innocent Jewish people and others who were completely innocent.  They did not have a reason for the mass genocide they committed.  According to The United States Holocaust Museum, many Jews served their country and were decorated war heroes who were proud to live in Germany (“Nazi Camps”).  The Museum, in the same article, also states that fourteen Jewish-German people won the Noble Prize in the thirty years before the Holocaust.  The concentration camps that the Nazi regime used to kill the millions of Jewish people in their country and in other countries had significant and lasting effects on the society of the Jewish people. 

                A concentration camp is defined by The Oxford Dictionary as “A camp where non-combatants of a district are accommodated” (qtd. in “Concentration Camps”).  Beginning in 1933, the Nazis created 20,000 camps to punish and kill enemies of the state.  Dewey Browder states that although the camps were originally created to hold the Nazi’s political enemies, they were later intended solely to kill Jews and various others such as Roma, homosexuals, and people with mental and physical disabilities.  These concentration camps that Hitler and the Nazis built were used to accomplish their goal as a regime, which was to have the entire Europe be controlled by the Aryan race (“Victims”).  Life was difficult in the camps where roll call was repeated twice daily at three in the morning and five at night and there were often no rules pertaining to guards in these camps, so they beat prisoners frequently.  The events that happened in the camps were extremely brutal.  Nazis gassed up to 800 people at a time, and screams and shrieks were heard as the innocent prisoners died (Fiedman and Berenbaum).  These atrocities were hideous reminders of the Holocaust, and there were many things that led to the camps that affected the entire European Jewish population.

                Government wide boycotts, pogroms or religious persecutions, and racism led to the Holocaust and the notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany.  The events that most likely had the most effect on the beginning of the holocaust were the boycotts and pogroms of Jewish citizens.  Robert Jackson states that during two nights in November of 1938, a pogrom occurred where the SS, or Schutzstaffel, troops killed 1,500 guiltless Jews and sent 30,000 Jews to concentration camps.  These pogroms were basically the beginning of a nationwide anti-Semitism belief that left Jews in camps where they were either executed, or worked to death.   To supplement the pogroms in the hatred against the Jews, the Nazi government put boycotts on Jewish businesses, and even some people that never considered themselves Jewish were boycotted due to the Nuremburg Laws.  On the first day of these boycotts, April 1, 1933, German storm troopers painted stars of David across the windows of Jewish shops, claiming not to buy from them (“Boycott of Jewish Businesses”).    If the boycotts and pogroms were not enough, Hitler ordered that all civil jobs were strictly for Aryans.  This led to the firing of every Jewish teacher and government worker.  This nationwide prejudice of the Jewish population led to the creation of the concentration camp and ultimately left a lasting effect on the Jewish people.  Once the camps were installed, the horrible killings started, and did not end until the conclusion of Hitler’s reign.