People who did not fit Hitler’s view of the perfect
Aryan German race faced extermination. Targets included Jews, Slavs, the
Roma (Gypsy) people, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped, and others.
On November 9, 1938, the world got its first glimpse of
the terror that lay head for Jews in Germany. German gangs attacked and
burned synagogues and Jewish business throughout Germany. Jewish hospitals,
homes, schools and cemeteries were also vandalized. The night became known
as Kristallnacht, or the “night of the broken glass.” Some
30,000 Jews were arrested and placed in prisons called concentration camps.
The Nazis used the concentration camps for many atrocities.
Camp prisoners were used as slave laborers and were often worked to death.
The Nazis conducted cruel medical experiments without using anesthesia.
In time, the Nazis adopted a policy of genocide, the deliberate
and systematic extermination of a group of people based on their race,
religion, or culture. The concentration camps became death camps with
gas chambers for mass killings. Many prisoners were forced to dig their
own graves. Once the graves were dug, the prisoners were shot. Those who
survived the shooting were buried alive. Other prisoners were starved
to death, or died from lack of medical care. One of the cruelest atrocities
involved “showers.” Naked men, women, and children were herded
into a large room expecting to be showered with water. Instead, poison
gas filled the room, causing a cruel, painful death. The bodies were then
removed and cremated.
Altogether, as many as six million Jews and five million
others perished in what became known as the Holocaust. After the war,
the Allied Powers convicted the Nazi leaders for “crimes against
humanity,” for their atrocities. The few survivors of the Holocaust
have implored the world to never let the world forget the tragedy for
the Jewish people, or for any people. More than half a century after the
Holocaust, institutions, memorials, and museums continue to teach the
history of the Holocaust to future generations.
