A Persecution like no Other
...mall newspaper from his town, which claimed that the Arabian race was superior to all and destined to rule the world. The newspaper also frequently degraded and blamed the Communists and the Jews at every opportunity, and as a result Hitler grew to hate them. Soon after his rise to power, Hitler little bit by little bit takes away the Jews’ rights, starting first by decreeing a three-day boycott of all Jewish businesses. All the while he is pushing his anti-Jewish propaganda, gaining more and more supporters. The German’s were so desperate for a leader who could deliver them from their crisis, that they didn’t consider what was actually happening. As small as it began, rights such as a limited number of Jews allowed in the German Colleges, it only grew to where all of the Jewish children were expelled from the German schools. Nazi law banished all Jewish newspapers, journals, and books taking away their communication as well a way of learning. With no books and no school for the children, the only way they could learn was from their parents or an older sibling. This was an incredibly intelligent move on Hitler’s part, since it is much easier to defeat or destroy an uneducated enemy than an educated enemy. When an individual is educated, he feels more confident about himself, therefore becoming more of a threat. Eventually almost all Jewish property was confiscated or burned and approximately 3 million Jews were confined in urban ghettos. Mordecai Paldiel describes first hand, “These ghettos were a sort of city/prison to segregate Jews from the rest of the public. The conditions of the ghettos included overcrowding, lack of food, and lack of sanitation, as well as brutality from the guards” (pg.82) Without Jewish newspapers, all that was available was anti-Jewish propaganda. According to Caroline Arnold, Hitler’s propaganda played a huge role in the Holocaust because he had to convince hundreds of thousands of people that what he was doing could be justified (pg. 9). He actually made the Germans out to be victims, claiming that the loss of the war was the Jew’s fault and therefore they should be held accountable for the economic state the country was in. Not only did Hitler campaign to adults, quite alarmingly, he campaigned also to children. He once said, “All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to” (qtd. in Craig 146). A Nazi propagandist, Julius Streicher, published anti-Semitic storybooks for young children which “portrayed Jews as shameful, sneaky, ugly scoundrels and Germans as proud strong handsome masters” (qtd. in Hashoah 31). Hitler was attempting to raise a generation of children who would think just like him. What began as a persecution of the Jewish rights ended up becoming a massacre. As time went by the situation only got worse. Thousands upon thousands of Jews were brutally beaten, tortured, arrested, or forced to work until they were either died of starvation or fatigue or they were killed. The hell these people were put through is absolutely unimaginable. According to Craig, in the end an estimated 6 million Jews lay dead. It is believed that 3 million of these Jews died in concentration and death camps alone; An additional 1.5 million died by the bullets of mobile death squad, and over 600,000 died in the ghettos of the cities (pg. 3). There isn’t just one victim in this tragic event-there are two. We mustn’t forget that the German citizens are, in a way, victims of circumstance. They were manipulated by a group of people at a time when they were most susceptive. There was a depression hanging heavily over Germany during this period and they needed a leader to bring them out of it. Of course it helped that their leader, Hitler, also found a group ...