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Monday 29/08/2022 NEWS TODAY Issue
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Chaise Harris
THE SIGNIFCANCE OF THE HOLOCAUST

The major significance of the Holocaust
was as an example of racist and prejudiced
beliefs. Racism has been a persistent
problem throughout human history, but the
events of the Holocaust displayed the
terrifying result of prejudice that was
organized and carried out by a
government. In the Holocaust, much of
the Nazis racist beliefs focused on Jewish
people, although many other groups were
also impacted, including gypsies,
homosexuals, Polish people and other
religious and ethnic minorities. Racism
directed at Jewish people is referred to as
anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism played a
key role in the Holocaust and historians
consider it one of the main causes.
By the 1930’s, Europe, and the rest of the

world, were in the grips of the Great
Depression, which saw unemployment Chaise Harris
increase rapidly. As well, Germany was
experiencing hyperinflation (a loss of value in
their currency) due to the reparation
Survivors story from Holocaust
.
payments of the Treaty of Versailles which Born in Rzeszow, Poland on 8 February 1938, Dasia was just one and a half years old
was forced upon Germany at the end of World
when the Nazi party invaded the Eastern part of the country. When she was just four
War I. These two events combined to set the
stage for the growth of anti-Semitism and years old, her parents, Chana and Szulem, were forced to make the ultimate sacrifice to
eventually the Holocaust. Since Jewish people keep their daughter safe: they left her with a Polish Catholic woman. On 30 November
were historically stereotyped as controlling 1942, her father wrote: “I am compelled to hide my precious infant branch, my little
banks and other sources of money, they
daughter, may she live, until the storm passes. It is difficult for me to describe the
became an easy and convenient target for the
source of Germany’s economic problems. sorrow and the pain that gnaws at my heart when I see that my bright little daughter
Hitler and other prominent Nazis, including cannot understand why she is being taken away from the arms of her parents.” In
Joseph Goebbels, blamed the Jewish for many hiding, Dasia would take on a Christian alias: Stasia. Under this new name, she hid her
of Germany’s problems in speeches and rallies
distress, ate unfamiliar food, prayed to a God she did not know, and, over time, grew
throughout the 1930s. For example,
Goebbels, who was the Nazi Propaganda further removed from who she was. “I was nobody’s child,” she reflects. Dasia would
Minister famously, declared that “every Jew is never see her parents again. After the war, she was adopted by her aunt and uncle.
a sworn enemy of the German people”. As Dasia emigrated to Australia in 1951, where she married, had two sons and five
well, in 1940 the film, The Eternal Jew, was
grandchildren. A pervasive fear of abandonment followed her into adulthood. Dasia
created as a means of showcasing Nazi anti-
Semitism. dedicated her life to working with children experiencing trauma. She became a
university lecturer in child development and came to understand some of her own
The final significance of the Holocaust was the anxieties this way. She says: “In my research, I delved into the area of prejudice and
renewed focus on human rights after 1945,
when both World War II and the Holocaust racism, and came to understand that what was holding me back was within me: a type
ended. For example, the United Nations was of internalized oppression.”
formed in 1945 with the goal of promoting co-
operation between nations and with
reaffirming the importance of human rights.
Specifically, the countries of the world wanted
to avoid another conflict like World War II and
to prevent the horrible atrocities of the
Holocaust from ever occurring again. To
further this goal, the United Nations
established the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in 1948. Member countries
adopted the document in an attempt to
create a central list of fundamental human
rights that all countries could agree to.
Therefore, the events of the Holocaust led to
the creation of the United Nations and
furthered the importance in human rights.
The United Nations remains an important
organization to this day and currently includes
193 member states
.
News Today Issue #10
Chaise Harris
What triggered the holocaust?

.
The Holocaust is one of the most Anti-Semitism is best defined

important events of the 20th century and as a prejudice or hatred of
is perhaps the most significant genocide Jewish people. Throughout
in human history. It unfolded during the history, anti-Semitism has
reign of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the increased during times of
major events of World War II. The term economic crisis. Because they
‘holocaust’ refers to death by fire in were an isolated minority, who
reference to the way that people were lacked their own nation-state
executed during the event. In general, it (until 1948 with the formation
is historically important as a genocide, of Israel), Jewish people were
which is a mass killing of a group of often blamed for society’s
people for ethnic, religious or racial problems throughout Europe. By the 1930’s, Europe, and the rest of the world, were in the grips of t
reasons. During the Holocaust, which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
occurred from 1933 to 1945, over 11 Party of Germany did not
million people were executed, including 6 invent anti-Semitism; rather
million who were Jewish, and another 5 they used it to their advantage,
million that were made up of several as it already existed for
other groups, including: disabled people, centuries. Historians refer to
homosexuals, communists, Soviet and the Nazi-focused anti-
Polish prisoners of war, gypsies, and Semitism of the 1930’s and
other religious and ethnic minorities. 1940’s as an example of
Historians have identified several scapegoating. Scapegoating is
different causes that led to the events of when the problems of a nation
the Holocaust, including anti-Semitism, are redirected towards a
Social Darwinism, Eugenics, different group. It is also
Ultranationalism, Adolf Hitler, and the referred to as ‘directing
Nazi Party. popular discontent’.
Chaise Harris
Summary of the Holocaust

Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored killing of Jews and others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.
Fueled by anti-Semitism, the Nazi persecution of Jews began soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 with a
boycott of Jewish businesses and the dismissal of Jewish civil servants. Under the Nürnberg Laws (1935), Jews lost their
citizenship. About 7,500 Jewish businesses were gutted and some 1,000 synagogues burned or damaged in the Kristallnacht
pogrom in 1938, and thereafter Jews were imprisoned in concentration camps or forced into ghettos. German victories early in
World War II (1939–45) brought most European Jews under the control of the Nazis and their satellites. As German armies moved
into Poland, the Balkans, and the Soviet Union, special mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, rounded up and killed Jews, Roma
(Gypsies), communists, political leaders, and intellectuals. Other groups targeted by the Nazis included homosexuals and the
mentally retarded, physically disabled, and emotionally disturbed. At the Wannsee Conference (1942), a “final solution” was
formulated for the extermination of European Jewry, and thereafter Jews from all over Nazi-occupied Europe were systematically
evacuated to concentration and extermination camps, where they were either killed or forced into slave labor. Underground
resistance movements arose in several countries, and Jewish risings took place against overwhelming odds in the ghettos of Poland
(see Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). Individuals such as Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands by their efforts; whether the Allied
governments and the Vatican could have done more to aid Jews has long been a matter of controversy. By the end of the war, an
estimated six million Jews and millions of others had been killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

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Monday 29/08/2022 NEWS TODAY Issue

THE SIGNIFCANCE OF THE HOLOCAUST

By the 1930’s, Europe, and the rest of the

News Today Issue #10

What triggered the holocaust?

The Holocaust is one of the most Anti-Semitism is best defined

Summary of the Holocaust

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