“Holocaust” began to be used in the context of the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis in Europe during the Second World War. It was an industry that created giant factories of death with its logistics and killing technologies. Anti-Semitism and the history of dislike of Jews have deep roots. They were persecuted, starting with the Egyptian pharaohs, the rulers of the Roman Empire, and the monarchy of Europe, and experienced humiliation from both Muslims and Christians with equal force. Germany is going through a crisis after its defeat in the First World War. In the Weimar Republic, many key positions in the government are occupied by Jews. But against the background of general poverty, unemployment, huge inflation, and devastation, ordinary Germans are trying to find the culprits and traditionally find them in the Jews. Hitler skillfully used the street and the everyday discontent of the Germans. He accuses the republic’s authorities of having ties with Jewish capital, the financial and economic elite of Germany’s recent enemies (France, the USA, Britain).
Anti-Semitism forms the basis of Hitler’s theory of the purity of race. He promises to improve the lives of ordinary Germans at the expense of Jews. Thus, the Jewish pogroms inside the country at the beginning of the Second World War will turn into genocide, which will become a catastrophe and the greatest tragedy of an entire nation (Craemer, 2018). From the moment the Nazis came to power in the thirty-third to the regime’s collapse in May forty-fifth, according to various estimates, about six million Jews were killed. During this time, over a thousand six hundred concentration camps and about nine hundred labor camps were built in Germany, in the occupied territories of Europe and the Soviet Union, and in satellite states (Weiner, 2018). All of them were in a single destruction system that worked without failures, delays, and stops. The seized property – from children’s toys to jewelry and real estate – was immediately distributed (Kaparulin, 2021). As promised, Hitler improved the lives of German citizens of the Aryan race at the expense of Jews. Some Jews were liquidated on the spot after the occupation of a certain territory.
In large cities, when many communities hampered simultaneous liquidation, ghettos were organized, where people from nearby areas were also driven. In large cities, when many communities were hampered by simultaneous liquidation, ghettos were organized, where people from nearby areas were also driven (Kaparulin, 2020). Near the cities, so-called pits were equipped, usually located in a ravine area. Executions were carried out after that the seizure of property, valuables, and other personal belongings. Some of the ghetto residents, according to the plan, were sent in echelons to concentration camps (Weiner, 2018). It is a mistake to think that the fault lies entirely with the German people, who supported the Fuhrer’s policy with maniacal devotion. The states of the fascist bloc and the occupied countries with puppet regimes worked with no less activity. For example, the Austrians bear a considerable part of the blame for the Holocaust (Craemer, 2018). It was they who carried out operations to exterminate Jews in the Netherlands.
Seventy-five thousand Jews were deported from occupied France by the Government and subsequently exterminated. About the fascist regime of Romania, he pursued an anti-Semitic policy with no less zeal. More than seven hundred and fifty thousand Jews lived in this country before the war (Weiner, 2018). They were subjected to genocide, and Romanian troops killed almost half a million Jews in occupied Bessarabia and Transnistria. The history of the Holocaust has many tragic and heroic pages (Ward, 2021). As a rule, we are talking either about the organization of the destruction system itself or about acts of resistance to it. For example, the whole world knows about the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 (Craemer, 2018). At that time, mass deportations from him to the Treblinka death camp were already being carried out, and the Jews who were still alive decided to resist and die with honor.
The Holocaust and its consequences have found a response in art. For example, Vasily Grossman, Ilya Ehrenburg, Jack Mayer, and Imre Curtis wrote about this in post-war literature (Ward, 2021). In the cinema, the events were also reflected repeatedly. Famous paintings include “Schindler’s List,” “The Pianist,” and “Sobibor. “Hundreds of poems have been written about the victims of the camps (Weiner, 2018). Some of them were created by those people who happened to experience the hardships of imprisonment on their skin (Craemer, 2018). The problems of modern society lie not only in racism but also in the fact that the ideas of citizenship to live and develop along the path historically chosen by them are replaced by ethnic strife.
In conclusion, today, more than ever, it is necessary to work with national communities, conduct tolerance seminars and training, and prevent extremism. Moreover, it is important among young people, because in a country that has defeated Nazism, paradoxically, ideas of nationalism and intolerance towards representatives of other ethnic cultures are becoming popular. It is on people that the further development of our society and the ability to stop modern youth from the seductive idea of a “superman” depends. In addition, it is on the education of citizens of our country who are ready to live in peace, friendship, and mutual understanding with our entire multinational society.
References
Craemer, T. (2018). Comparative analysis of reparations for the Holocaust and for the transatlantic slave trade. The Review of Black Political Economy, 45(4), 299-324. Web.
Ward, M. (2021) Revisiting the crimes of the past: the image of the perpetrator in recent German Holocaust film, Holocaust Studies, 27:2, 339-349.
Kaparulin, Y. (2020). The Holocaust in Southern Ukraine: The Response of Survived Jews of Kalinindorf District after the German Occupation. In Colloquia Humanistica (No. 9, pp. 153-180).
Weiner, R. (2018) Tendentious texts: Holocaust representations and nation-rebuilding in East German, Italian, and West German schoolbooks, 1949–1989, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 17:3, 342-360.