The Holocaust: What They Didn’t Tell You

Anti-Semitism existed long before the time of the Holocaust. It dates back to the early centuries AD, around the time Christianity spurred as a religion all over the eastern world. Christian Anti-Semitism was prevalent very soon after its creation. Constantine the Great of the Holy Roman Empire demanded Jews convert to Christianity, but they resented and he made their life a complete and utter hell for it.

Both the Church and the State made moves towards the Jewish population, just like Hitler’s regime would centuries later. Hitler stared his movement by gradually stripping the rights, boycotting shops, taking away citizenship, and sterilizing of the Jews. Krystalnacht played an integral role within the switch from Phase I to Hitler’s Final Solution. During Krystalnacht, the Germans caused so much damage upon the Jews and blamed them as well. They showed no mercy and burned all the synagogues and religious scripts. Hitler stepped over the line of no return and essentially declared war upon the Jews. He was not interested in making the Jews feel absolute misery; he was now focused on annihilating them. The Final Solution was now in step, and on the night of Krystallnacht he started to deport thousands of Jews to the concentration camps where six million would eventually die.

Identity, membership, and universe of obligation were the governing ideas that surrounded the Holocaust. The Jews were forced to accept their identities and were prosecuted for who they were by the Nazis. The Jews banded together in resistance and became members of the resistance against Hitler, and they felt obligated to each other as well as themselves to fight for what they believed in and to mark themselves upon the Earth as a worthy and equal people. The Jews all stood up for their freedom, but some extraordinary people made a special effort to lead the resistance and they were the upstanders.

They were not afraid of their fate, and they knew only that they were obligated to their fellow Jews to lead the effort. There were no Jewish bystanders to my knowledge, and I don’t consider the ones who were lucky enough not to be deported as bystanders. Every Jew, even today, still suffers the Holocaust. The Germans had a choice to accept the Nazi identity, the identity that would help the Jews, or the bystander identity. The majority chose the Nazi, but many also joined the Jewish cause. The people who helped the Jews felt obligated to them and the human race as a whole, and they acted on it for what they believed to be morally correct.