The Holocaust :: European Europe History

The Holocaust The Holocaust was the extermination of the Jews and other people whom Hitler considered inferior. It took place from 1933 to 1945. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany led this effort. About 12 million people were murdered, half of them being Jews. When Hitler took over control of Germany, everything changed. Hitler had a very strong prejudice against the Jews. He wanted to create the perfect race of blonde haired blue eyed Germans. His followers, who were the soldiers in the camps, were called Nazis. They enforced all killing that Hitler wanted done. Also, there were many other people involved in this massive genocide. Different people were leading the killing and different groups of people were being killed, not only Jews. For instance, there were many doctors who ran tests on people, but didn't care if the patients were hurt or even killed, which they usually were. All surgeries were performed without any anesthetic. These are just a couple general things that happened durin g the Holocaust. There are so many things that happened in this time period that are impossible to imagine or just are too horrible to think about. The things about the Holocaust that I find the most unnerving are the torture and pain they put the Jews and other groups through. The two main topics I feel are most serious or crucial are the medical experiments and their results and reactions on the patients. Also, the different camps, their strong points and general methods for killing used there. There are three camps that are familiar to me and I hear mentioned the most. They are Dachau, Treblinka, and of course, Auschwitz. The doctor who was most infamous for carrying out horrible experiments was Mengele. Dachau, Treblinka, and Auschwitz were three of the six concentration camps that were used for execution of Jews and other groups considered inferior. At Treblinka, 700,000 to over 1,000,000 people were killed. The gassings at Dachau never went past the experimental stage. They were in no way used as the gas chambers in Auschwitz were. Also, at Dachau, they performed Intense Cooling experiments. A summary of what they did was they'd dress the subject in certain clothes and either put their whole body, to include the brain stem, or only up to the brain stem in water which was from 2.5 to 12 degrees Centigrade. Fatalities only occurred when the brain stem and back of head were also chilled.